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NUCLEAR
A green Savannah River, long after St. Paddy's Day?
BNFL BLAMED FOR RADIATION IN TEETH
Tons of Depleted Uranium Polluting Iraq
Czech guns reach Yemen
Europe puts France up for reactor
Iraqi Scientists Lied About Nukes
Arms deal turned sour for Saddam
N. Korea Rejects U.S. Nuclear Demand
Rebuilding nuclear arsenal
GAO Suggests More Money for Nuke Cleanup
Clean-up funds too low at 42 U.S. nuke plants-GAO
Bush Signs $27.3B Energy-And-Water Bill
Pushing Technology And Fighting Skeptics
MILITARY
For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went Sour
Republican Blocks Bush Arms Export Plan
A new era in Azerbaijan
Despite Danger, Japan Says, Its Troops Will Still Go to Iraq
Japanese Premier Affirms Pledge on Troops
British Greet Navy Rustbuckets With a Volley of Venom
Boeing's Chief Steps Down a Week After Firings Over Ethics
Taiwan, US to hold defense talks, computer war simulation
Demobilized in Colombia
Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say
Iraqi Council Agrees on National Elections
U.S. Forces Kill Dozens After Iraq Ambushes
Informal Peace Plan for Mideast Is Unveiled in Geneva
State of fear
Quiet Times in the Mideast Encourage Efforts for a Cease-Fire
Syrian Pressing for Israel Talks
Rumsfeld Presses NATO Allies on Iraq
NATO Struggles to Boost Afghan Forces
Oil cartel and Russia on the verge of a cold war
NASA misses the mark
Satellite to launch; curiosity soars
NASA Works on Radiation Protection Shield
N. Korea Accuses U.S. of 150 Spy Flights
In Rumsfeld's Shop
CROCODILE TEARDROPS
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Happy holidays from the Dept. of Homeland Security
U.S. in Talks to Return Scores Held at Base
U.S. to Release 140 From Guantanamo
Army Colonel At Prison Charged
OTHER
W.H.O. Aims to Treat 3 Million for AIDS
WHO Set to Announce Details of Global Effort To Fight HIV and AIDS
Poison from Lethal Fish Could Be a Painkiller
ACTIVISTS
China Frees 3 'Cyber Dissidents' (as a Diplomatic Visit Nears)
Sylvia Bernstein, 88, Civil Rights Activist, Dies
Victims To Protest New Exhibit Of Enola Gay
Miami Protesters See Rich Heritage in Dissent
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
A green Savannah River, long after St. Paddy's Day?
Feds say plan to turn nukes into fuel is flawed
BY MICHAEL WALL - michael.wall@creativeloafing.com
11.27.03
Creative Loafing Atlanta
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/news_feature2.html
November has been a roller coaster month for the company that wants to build the first plant that will turn weapons-grade plutonium -- easily some of the nastiest stuff mankind has ever concocted -- into a milder, safer fuel that can be used in nuclear power plants. The fuel, made from mixtures of uranium and plutonium oxides, is called MOX.
Two weeks ago, Congress approved $402 million for Duke Cogema Stone & Webster to begin phase one construction of its proposed MOX plant at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site.
Obviously, the lawmakers who approved that massive expenditure weren't aware that the U.S. Department of Energy sent a letter to Duke Cogema Nov. 3 telling the company that it would have to redo its plant design "as a matter of safety and good business."
The DOE had a problem with some of Duke Cogema's estimates on radiation risks in and around the MOX plant. The company gave the DOE numbers for radiation levels miles away from the plant, and didn't include estimates for levels just outside the plant. Oops. Some folks, namely the crews working in and around the plant, might want to know that kind of thing.
Duke Cogema was "basically using a trick to show that the radiation exposure to a person standing at the [plant] would meet regulation," says Greenpeace International's Tom Clements. "The DOE has not accepted this trick and has forced them to do their calculations right outside the facility, and this could lead to redesign of the plan, and is certainly going to delay the whole program by many months, according to the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]."
Neither the DOE nor Duke Cogema have said exactly how long the redesign will delay construction, or how much more money it will cost.
Yet, the setback turns up the heat on an issue that's been controversial from its inception, and it hasn't been one of the typical powers-that-be versus tree-hugging, anti-nuke activists.
DOE's plan to make MOX at the Savannah River Site has led to several scuffles between Southern officials and the agency, the most notable coming in 2002, when South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said he would lie down in the middle of the road to keep trucks carrying high-grade plutonium destined for the Savannah River Site from entering his state.
Hodges lost that round.
Right now, Georgia officials are going back and forth with the DOE over a program that monitors how much radioactive pollution from the site makes its way into Georgia waters.
Besides being the future home of the country's first MOX plant, the Savannah River Site also stores one of the world's largest deposits of plutonium, yummy leftovers from the Cold War. Plutonium, by the way, is the stuff that's refined and ready for nuclear warheads, as opposed to uranium, which would need processing to do any real damage.
About 35 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste is also stored there. But what's caused the current tiff between Georgia and the DOE is a gas called tritium.
Tritium, according to Clements is "radioactive gas that's used in all nuclear weapons to boost explosive power of the weapons. It's also the gas that makes the thermonuclear bomb possible."
Tritium has shown up in ground-water supplies in Georgia, and state Environmental Protection Division inspectors have found tritium levels in fish tissue to be 15 to 90 times normal, though still within safe levels. Other radioactive particles, specifically cesium-137 and strontium-90, were elevated in fish from the Savannah River, also within safety guidelines.
The bad news is that DOE officials recently told EPD that they would no longer be giving Georgia the money to monitor tritium levels.
In a Nov. 10 letter to Natural Resources Commissioner Lonice Barret, EPD Assistant Director David Word wrote that without the DOE money, seven staffers who monitor radiation levels in the state could lose their jobs.
Word also wrote, "These reductions would affect not only our efforts around SRS [the Savannah River Site], but also our monitoring and emergency response capabilities around all other nuclear facilities, and potentially our ability to perform radiochemical analyses pursuant to the Safe Drinking Water Act."
DOE officials, according to the letter, contend that the funds for radioactivity monitoring was just seed money, until the state could get its own program up and running.
But the fight ain't over yet. EPD has asked Gov. Sonny Perdue's office to help keep the DOE monitoring money in place.
-------- britain
BNFL BLAMED FOR RADIATION IN TEETH
December 1, 2003
UK Northwest Evening Mail
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/viewarticle.asp?id=52860
CHILDREN living close to Sellafield have higher levels of plutonium in their teeth than anywhere else in the country, the government has admitted.
While the amount of radiation is small, some scientists fear the plutonium could cause cancer in certain types of people.
Public health minister Melanie Johnson confirmed the findings of a Department of Health report, which revealed that children living close to the plant had twice the level of plutonium than children living 140 miles away.
Ms Johnson said: "Analysis indicates that concentrations of plutonium decrease with increasing distance from Sellafield, suggesting the plant is a source of contamination."
The government stressed the radiation posed no risk to public health but scientists, environmental groups and MPs were today calling for an inquiry into the findings.
BNFL discharges small levels of plutonium from Sellafield into the Irish Sea after reprocessing. The company today stressed that levels of plutonium were minute and represented an insignificant risk to health.
A spokesperson said: "What is not clear is whether the plutonium recorded in this study originated from Sellafield or from nuclear weapons testing fall out."
-------- depleted uranium
Tons of Depleted Uranium Polluting Iraq
Monday, December 01, 2003
Report by YellowTimes.org NewsFromtheFront.org
http://yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1683
WASHINGTON (NFTF.org) -- U.S. forces unleashed at least 75 tons of toxic depleted uranium on Iraq during the war, reports the Christian Science Monitor.
An unnamed U.S. Central Command spokesman disclosed to the Monitor last week that coalition forces fired 300,000 bullets coated with armored-piercing depleted uranium (DU) during the war.
"The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq," wrote correspondent Scott Peterson.
Peterson measured four sites around Baghdad struck with depleted uranium munitions and found high levels of radioactive contamination, but few warnings to this effect issued among the populace at large.
While the Pentagon maintains that spent weapons coated with the low-level, radioactive nuclear-waste are relatively harmless, Peterson notes that U.S. soldiers have taken it among themselves to print leaflets or post signs warning of DU contamination.
"After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," said one sergeant requesting anonymity.
On a group of abandoned burnt-out U.S. munitions supply trucks, Peterson saw signs U.S. troops put up warning in Arabic, "Danger -- Get away from this area." A local vendor said that soldiers in masks warned him and others to keep away from the site.
These were the only warnings Peterson found. He wrote that despite the military's attempts to bulldoze the surrounding topsoil, the Geiger counter readings on remaining piles of radioactive DU dust registered at hundreds of times the average, and a DU dart from a 120 mm tank shell emitted radiation over 1,300 times normal.
Two other sites visited were randomly selected Iraqi armored vehicles destroyed with DU bullets. The remains of these tanks sit near a produce vendor on the outskirts of Baghdad, and have become popular playthings for children; the Geiger counter reading from "a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser" near one child registered 1,000 times normal.
There were no warnings posted informing the populace of the radioactive emissions coming from the tanks.
"Radioactive? Oh, really?" was the response of a former director general of the ministry, when Peterson presented a Geiger counter registering emissions of 1,900 times normal from spent DU-coated bullets amongst the grounds at the Ministry of Planning.
"Yesterday, more than 1,000 employees came here, and they didn't know anything about it," he said. "We have started to not believe what the American government says. What I know is that the occupiers should clean up and take care of the country they invaded."
YellowTimes.org correspondent Lisa Ashkenaz Croke drafted this report.
----
Czech guns reach Yemen
December 01, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/120103/pag_yemen.shtml
The crates, labeled "sporting and hunting weapons," looked innocuous in Prague. But inside, dozens of Czech-made sniper rifles were cradled in plastic foam. Their destination: Yemen, a hotbed of al-Qaida activity.
An unidentified licensed Czech arms dealer sold the rifles -- along with 176 Soviet-era tanks, 60 tank cannons and a dozen L-39 combat jets -- to the Yemeni government in the past four years, according to a new watchdog report.
The Czech exports, part of the country's $90 million-a-year arms trade, raise troubling questions about the ultimate buyers since Yemen has a history of reselling arms to people from volatile nations across the Mideast and Africa, human rights group say.
"You can never be sure that a country won't resell the equipment as its own surplus. It's a serious problem," conceded Vratislav Vajnar, managing director of the Association of Defense Industry, a trade group representing the Czech Republic's 120-plus weapons makers and exporters.
Al-Qaida terrorists are suspected in the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 U.S. sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000.
That bombing turned up traces of C-4, a plastic explosive developed for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. But Semtex, a Czech-made explosive, has been used in other terrorist bombings, and on Nov. 5 border police arrested three men as they tried to smuggle Semtex over the border into Austria. Taped to one of the suspects' bodies was 5 1/2 pounds of the powerful explosive -- enough to blow up a dozen jetliners.
The recent Czech weapons trade was outlined in a report by Amnesty International, which cited customs records and other documents.
Amnesty, Transparency International and other groups have expressed growing concern about legal sales of legitimate weapons and armaments to countries such as Yemen that are unstable, have ties to militant groups or are known for reselling equipment to third parties.
Yemen, the ancestral home of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, is particular cause for concern: On Tuesday, Yemeni security forces captured a man described as one of the country's top al-Qaida leaders and the suspected mastermind of the Cole bombing.
"Weapons sold to Yemen have ended up in Somalia and Sudan," Karel Dolejsi, who tracks questionable Czech arms deals for Amnesty, told The Associated Press. "Our leaders still have a communist mentality. They don't believe this information is for the public."
Czech authorities acknowledge the country's manufacturers and exporters have sold aircraft, tanks, weapons, ammunition and other military equipment to Yemen, Algeria, Angola, Colombia, Sri Lanka and other hotspots.
Although there is no hard evidence that terrorists have obtained arms from the Czech Republic, human rights groups say the risk is real that deadly weaponry will fall into the wrong hands.
In its report, Amnesty called on the Czech government -- one of the few exporting nations to keep weapons sales a state secret -- to make public the details of such transactions.
That secrecy will end next spring, when the country -- a NATO member and a staunch U.S. ally with 275 troops in Iraq -- joins the European Union. The EU's code of conduct requires member states to publicize information on arms exports.
Companies are generally free to sell to countries such as Yemen that are not under U.N. arms embargoes, but officials carefully screen each transaction before giving their approval, said Ivo Mravinac, a spokesman for the Trade and Industry Ministry, which oversees the process.
"In the case that terrorism might be involved, the decision is of course negative," Mravinac said.
"But unless there are signals indicating something like that, the Foreign Ministry must contemplate whether it is appropriate to cast doubts on the guarantees given by the foreign government."
Vajnar, the Czech arms trade representative, believes the government's checklist for arms deals, and the burden on foreign governments to furnish credible "end-use certificates" proving the weapons are destined for armies -- not terrorists or their middlemen -- provide adequate security.
"If something isn't clear, the sale is stopped. You're out of luck," he said.
Last year, Czech authorities rejected 21 requests to export arms to several countries, including Iran, Mravinac said. They approved 1,090 other requests; Mravinac declined to identify the nations involved.
The Czech sales are dwarfed by the United States, by far the world's largest weapons exporter with $15 billion in annual business. Britain, Israel, Russia, France, Germany, China and Sweden are among other major players.
During communism, which ended in 1989, then-Czechoslovakia was among the world's chief exporters. It sold hundreds of tanks, thousands of firearms and large quantities of Semtex to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Cambodia and other troublespots, a practice the government insists stopped long ago.
Libyan terrorists used Semtex in 1988 to down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
Although its market share since has shrunk, the Czech Republic remains a haven for arms dealers hawking high-quality weaponry including Skorpion submachine guns, L-159 subsonic light combat aircraft, Tamara mobile radar systems and a wide array of precision small-caliber handguns.
Applications for licenses to export Czech weapons jumped by nearly 40 percent this year. Neither the government nor the industry could explain the sudden interest, but both pointed to a surplus of military equipment that the army is trying to unload.
Meanwhile, at home and abroad, arms and explosives are making their way onto a lucrative black market that thrives despite frequent prosecutions and prison terms of five to 15 years.
Two Czechs are awaiting trial after their arrests last year on suspicion of peddling weapons and other military equipment to "interested persons in Arab states." Investigators refused to identify the countries but said the weaponry included anti-tank grenades, Kalashnikov rifles and mobile anti-aircraft systems.
Last month -- just an hour after Amnesty's Dolejsi gave an interview to the AP at a hotel in the southern Czech city of Brno -- police burst into the lounge bar and arrested two Slovaks who allegedly sold undercover officers metal rods of uranium for $715,000.
Later, Czech authorities said they could not be used in a weapon, countering initial suspicions that the material might have been suitable for a radioactive dirty bomb. Two rods contained depleted uranium, and three others were of natural uranium, said Pavel Pittermann, a spokesman for the Czech nuclear safety office.
In a chilling recent sweep, Czech police seized homemade silencers and sophisticated gadgetry designed to detonate Semtex with a few keystrokes on a cell phone -- equipment that could only be of use to hit men or terrorists.
"I don't know where (criminals) get it from, but it doesn't come from here," said David Jung, commercial director at Explosia, the company which makes Semtex for foreign militaries and construction and mining companies.
Jung spoke in an interview at Explosia's headquarters: a jumble of barracks-style buildings ringed with rusty barbed wire and patrolled by muscular guards with long blond hair and earrings.
The government, which took over Explosia after the Sept. 11 attacks as a security precaution, sounds a fatalistic note about what happens to Czech weaponry after it's sold.
"Should this material possibly be abused," Mravinac said, "then the responsibility lies not with our country, but with the country that gave the necessary guarantees."
-------- europe
Europe puts France up for reactor
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Wednesday, 26 November, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3239806.stm
ITER - NUCLEAR FUSION PROJECT The project is estimated to cost $5bn over the next 10 years It will produce the first sustained fusion reactions Iter is the final stage before a commercial reactor is built The European Union has chosen France as its preferred location for a nuclear reactor that scientists hope will revolutionise world power production.
It will cost billions to build the fusion machine which releases energy in a similar way to the Sun's furnaces.
Scientists say the new reactor will be the first to give out a lot more power than it consumes on initial ignition.
International partners in the immense engineering project include Canada, the US, China, Japan, Russia and Korea.
Well placed
A final decision on the siting of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) should come in December at a meeting of officials involved in its planning.
The EU candidate, Cadarache, in southeastern France, is likely face stiff competition from Rokkasho in Japan.
THE QUEST FOR FUSION What is nuclear fusion and how can it be harnessed?
In pictures The plant, wherever it is constructed, is expected to generate thousands of jobs.
Spain had initially put forward its own choice of Vandellos but then fell in line with its EU partners when research ministers agreed it could host the administrative headquarters for the European arm of the Iter project.
Europe believes it stands a good chance of hosting the fusion plant.
A recent report, chaired by Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the UK Government, said "either (European) site would be likely to win the international site selection".
Star power
The Iter project is the latest stage in the decades-long quest to develop fusion power.
In conventional nuclear power plants, heavy atoms are split to release energy. But in a fusion reactor, energy is harnessed by forcing the nuclei of light atoms together - the same process that takes place at the core of the Sun and makes it shine.
Advocates say commercial fusion plants of the future could be cheap to run and environmentally friendly, with much less radioactive waste produced.
However, developing the necessary technology is proving very expensive and time-consuming.
To use fusion reactions as an energy source, it is necessary to heat a gas to temperatures exceeding 100 million Celsius - many times hotter than the centre of the Sun. At these temperatures, the gas becomes a plasma.
Under these conditions, the plasma particles, from deuterium and tritium, fuse to form helium and high speed neutrons.
A commercial power station will use the heat generated by the energetic neutrons, slowed down by a blanket of denser material (lithium), to generate electricity.
The fuels used are virtually inexhaustible. Deuterium and tritium are both isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium is extracted from water and tritium is manufactured from a light metal, lithium, which is found all over the world.
One kilogram would produce the same amount of energy as 10,000,000 kilograms of fossil fuel.
Iter would be the world's largest international cooperative research and development project after the International Space Station.
Its goal will be to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and in doing so demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial reactor.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Scientists Lied About Nukes
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
Dec 1, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_BOMBMAKERS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Iraqi scientists never revived their long-dead nuclear bomb program, and in fact lied to Saddam Hussein about how much progress they were making before U.S.-led attacks shut the operation down for good in 1991, Iraqi physicists say.
Before that first Gulf War, the chief of the weapons program resorted to "blatant exaggeration" in telling Iraq's president how much bomb material was being produced, key scientist Imad Khadduri writes in a new book.
Other leading physicists, in Baghdad interviews, said the hope for an Iraqi atomic bomb was never realistic. "It was all like building sand castles," said Abdel Mehdi Talib, Baghdad University's dean of sciences.
Seven months after a U.S.-British invasion toppled Saddam's Baath Party government, Iraqi scientists have grown more vocal in countering Bush administration claims, used to justify the war, that Baghdad had "reconstituted" nuclear weapons development, and that it once was a mere six months from making a bomb.
At best, Khadduri writes, it would have taken Iraq several years to build a nuclear weapon if the 1991 war and subsequent U.N. inspections had not intervened.
His self-published "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage," a chronicle of years of secret weapons work and of a final escape into exile, is part of this senior scientist's emergence from a low profile in Canada - intended to refute what he calls a "massive deception" in Washington that led the United States into war.
Months of searching by hundreds of U.S. experts have found no trace of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, just as U.N. inspectors found none before the war. No Iraqi scientists have confirmed the programs were revived in recent years.
Bush administration officials still speak, nonetheless, of a threat from such weapons - of Baghdad's "robust plans" for them, as Vice President Dick Cheney puts it - in defending last March's U.S. invasion of Iraq. They offer no hard evidence, however.
Khadduri, a U.S.- and British-educated physicist, writes that he did theoretical work on nuclear weapons as long ago as the mid-1970s, after joining Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission. By the late 1980s, as the secret bomb program accelerated, he was in a pivotal position as coordinator of all its scientific and engineering information.
The U.N. inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who dismantled the bomb program after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 war, saw Khadduri as a key source and conducted an all-day interview with him earlier this year in Toronto, where he has resided since 1998.
"Iraq's Nuclear Mirage," available via online booksellers, dismisses the U.S. contention that the atom-bomb establishment was somehow resurrected after the IAEA demolished it, U.N. inspectors were stationed in Iraq and Iraqi specialists were scattered.
"Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort?" he asks. "Where are the buildings and infrastructure?"
The continuing U.S. weapons hunt amounts to no more than "investigating mirages," he says.
An ex-bombmaker still in Iraq is just as dismissive of the unsubstantiated U.S. allegations.
"There was no point in trying to revive this program. There was no material, no equipment, no scientists," former bomb designer Sabah Abdul Noor said in a recent interview at Baghdad's Technology University.
"Scientists were scattered and under the eyes of inspectors, totally scattered. To do a project, you have to be together."
Talib, the newly elected university dean, was an anti-Baathist who didn't participate in the bomb program, but was close to many who did. They vastly oversold their accomplishments before 1991, the physicist said.
"They put a lot of lies on Saddam Hussein," he said in a Baghdad interview. "They took a lot of money out of him through what you call, in English, bluffing." When their installations were finally demolished, it "saved their necks" by burying their mistakes, he said. "They could tell Saddam, `There's nothing left.'"
Khadduri, in his core position in the program, could attest to the overselling.
He writes that when he transferred top-secret documents of bomb program chief Jafar Dhia Jafar to an optical disc in 1991, he found the "blatant exaggeration" in a 1990 report to Saddam.
With its clever wording, Khadduri said in a telephone interview from Toronto, "one could easily have been convinced we had produced a couple of kilograms of enriched uranium instead of a couple of grams" - that is, about four pounds of bomb material instead of a fraction of an ounce.
A bomb would have required some 40 pounds of highly enriched uranium.
In a 1997 summary, the IAEA said there were no indications the Iraqis ever produced more than a few grams of such material. It also said there were "no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance."
Khadduri and others said the design and actual production of a bomb would have been an extremely difficult task.
It was an impossible quest, "all futility," said one of Baghdad's senior nuclear physicists, Hamed M. al-Bahili.
Al-Bahili, who joined the Atomic Energy Commission in 1968 but remained outside the weapons program, said his colleagues inside "all knew they wouldn't achieve results." As for whether the program was later revived, he said, "these American inspectors are wasting their time."
----
Arms deal turned sour for Saddam
U.S. officials tell of a failed effort to buy North Korean missiles, with Syria's help
David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker/NYT
Monday, December 1, 2003
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/119699.html
WASHINGTON - It was Saddam Hussein's last weapons deal - and it did not go exactly as he and his generals imagined.
For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Saddam's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea. Bush administration officials now say they believe that those negotiations - mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government - were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles.
Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to these Bush administration officials.
As war with the United States approached, though, Saddam discovered what American officials say they have known for nearly a decade now: Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is less than a fully reliable negotiating partner.
In return for a $10 million down payment, Saddam appears to have gotten nothing.
The trail that investigators have uncovered, partly from reading computer hard drives found in Baghdad and partly from interviews with captured members of Saddam's inner circle, shows that a month before the American invasion, Iraqi officials traveled to Syria to demand that North Korea refund $1.9 million because it had failed to meet deadlines for delivering its first shipment of goods.
North Korea deflected the request, telling Saddam's representatives, in the words of one investigator, that "things were too hot" to begin delivering missile technology through Syria.
The transaction provides an interesting glimpse into the last days of Saddam's government, and what administration officials say were Iraq's desires for a long-term business deal for missiles and a missile production plant.
Bush administration officials have seized on the attempted purchase of the North Korean missiles, known as the Nodong, and a missile assembly line to buttress their case that Saddam was violating United Nations resolutions, which clearly prohibited missiles of the range of the North Korean Nodong. It also establishes that Syria was a major arms-trading bazaar for Saddam's government, in this case hiding an Iraqi effort to obtain missiles, they say.
Investigators say that Syria also probably had offered its ports and territory as the surreptitious transit route for the North Korea-Iraq missile deal, although it remains unclear what demands the government in Damascus might have made in return.
Further, according to United States government officials and international investigators, the Iraqi official who brokered the deal, Munir Awad, is now in Syria, apparently living under government protection. In serving as a middleman in this deal and hoping to have a cut in the proceeds, Syria was acting in violation of Security Council resolutions even as it served on the council and voted with the United States on the most important resolution before the war.
International inspectors note that the missile deal gone bad appears to be the most serious violation that has been found so far. The investigators say they tripped upon it while looking for evidence of a continuing nuclear program, or an active effort to accumulate more biological or chemical weapons. "So far there's really not much in that arena," said one official who has monitored the continuing search for weapons.
After spending millions of dollars in a search that continues on the ground in Iraq to this day, the official noted, "We've learned this much: that Kim Jong Il took Saddam to the cleaners."
The deal that Iraq struck with North Korea was supposed to be for more than just missiles.
"This $10 million was a down payment, and not just a straight purchase for Nodong missiles, but for Nodong technology," said one American official who has read documentation on the deal. "Saddam's intent was to get the expertise from the North Koreans and, potentially, open his own production line."
The exact outlines of the deal remain unclear, the official said, "since the North Koreans ended up stiffing the Iraqis." The Iraqis were demanding their money back, "right up to the end," the official said. Administration officials say investigators uncovered evidence of meetings between the Iraqis and North Koreans as least as far back as late 2001.
The final session was held in Syria in February of this year, just before the war began, officials said. On that trip, says an Iraqi report on the mission that has since been uncovered, the Iraqis were also seeking night-vision goggles, ammunition and gun barrels - mostly through European middlemen.
At that point, a huge American-British force had been built up on Iraq's southern borders, and it was clear that war was coming. What is also interesting about the shopping list, however, is "what's not on it," said one investigator. "Nothing nuclear, no dual-use items, nothing about weapons of mass destruction."
-------- korea
N. Korea Rejects U.S. Nuclear Demand
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea rejected a key U.S. demand Monday that the communist nation first renounce its nuclear programs before winning any security guarantees from Washington, saying it would ``rather die'' than submit to conditions that amount to ``slavery.''
The announcement comes as North Korea, the United States and four other nations fine tune their positions ahead of planned international talks on defusing a standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
South Korea, Japan and the United States are working on an accord for participating nations to sign. It reportedly requires North Korea to agree to dropping its nuclear programs and allow inspections. The other countries would agree to provide a security guarantee.
``The U.S. demand that the DPRK drop 'the nuclear program first' means that the DPRK should lay down arms and work for the U.S. as a servant. The DPRK can never accept it. It would rather die than having peace in exchange for slavery,'' North Korea said in a commentary carried by the official news agency, KCNA.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the official name for North Korea.
Washington has repeatedly said it is willing to provide North Korea a written security guarantee, but only after the government in Pyongyang renounces its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea said Monday that both actions must come at the same time in order ``to comprehensively and fairly settle the nuclear issue,'' according to KCNA.
``The DPRK's blueprint of a package solution is simple, clear-cut and fair,'' KCNA said. ``It is the DPRK's stand that both sides should lay down arms at the same time and coexist in peace.''
The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are trying to arrange another round of six-nation talks on persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear programs. No date has been set, but organizers are shooting for sometime this month. The first six-nation talks, in Beijing in August, ended without much progress.
Over the weekend, North Korea said it would not allow Japan to participate in the talks if Tokyo insisted on pushing its agenda to include discussions on North Korea's past practice of abducting Japanese citizens to train its communist spies.
Japanese officials said Monday they intend to participate in the next round despite the North's opposition.
North Korea on Monday also demanded that the United States compensate it for halting work on two nuclear reactors there, suggesting that could also complicate plans for six-nation talks.
The U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, announced the yearlong suspension last month to pressure the North into abandoning its nuclear weapons ambitions. The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union belong to the consortium.
The ``decision made by the U.S. deserves serious attention as it came at a time when the six-party talks are high on the agenda,'' said another commentary carried by KCNA.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun has said that the fate of the North's nuclear reactor project will be tied to progress in resolving the larger nuclear weapons dispute.
The project was launched after North Korea promised to freeze and eventually dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons facilities in a 1994 deal with the United States. But the agreement went sour after U.S. officials said last year North Korea had admitted to secretly running a nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
Last month, it said it was building more atomic bombs, adding to the one or two it is believed to already possess.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Rebuilding nuclear arsenal
S. Iqtidar Husain
December 1, 2003
Hi Pakistan
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en46454&F_catID=&f_type=source
The policies of the United States in the nuclear field have recently undergone a major shift, and this has serious implications internationally. At the end of the cold war both the United States and the former Soviet Union decided to scale down their nuclear arsenal reducing the number of warheads by sixty per cent by the year 2012. This was in terms of the Moscow Treaty, ratified by the US Senate in March 2003. Production of all other nuclear components and materials was also halted. An embargo was placed on all nuclear weapons-testing in the US in 1992 and the site for such testing at Nevada closed down. All this is now changing.
The first indicator came during the Clinton administration, when the Senate refused to ratify in 1998 the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), of which the US itself was the sponsor. Before the decision in the US Congress, an intense debate took place in the American print and electronic media on the merits of the CTBT.
For full four days one watched on various TV channels in the US analyses and commentaries by experts on the different clauses of this treaty and its implications. all the serious newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal etc. were full of editorials and op-eds on the subject.
Interestingly what was quite revealing was that in all these writings and discussions, barring one college student, a girl of Indian origin, who objected to nuclear weapons per se being inherently immoral and devastating, no one raised this issue as particularly relevant. Instead, the entire focus was on how America would be disadvantaged by acceding to this treaty, in not being able to modernize its nuclear arsenal and carry out further research in this field; this despite the US possessing the largest and most comprehensive stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Predictably, the treaty was not ratified.
The Bush administration plunged head-long into the nuclear revival programme, with its emphasis on a more assertive nuclear strategy. The first signs of the administration's new nuclear policy came last January in its Nuclear Posture Review.
The Policy Paper, produced by the Pentagon, said that the United States should not just maintain the capability to launch large nuclear counter-strikes as a deterrent to nuclear powers, "but should consider possibly striking pre-emptively at those countries developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons."
The doctrine proposed the manufacture of a new generation of nuclear weapons called "bunker-busters" to destroy caches of weapons buried deep underground. The doctrine also stipulated the creation of low-yield (5 kilo tons) nuclear warheads which had been banned in the US under a decade old law. It was also recommended that the ban on nuclear weapons testing be lifted.
The bad news is that the above doctrine is being implemented quite rapidly. After much deliberation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and despite some reservations from the Democrats, the Committee cleared proposals in the defence budget 2004 to revive America's nuclear arms industry. These proposals have been approved by the lower house of the Congress this month (November) and would soon be cleared by the Senate.
The defence spending bill for 2004 provides six million dollars to explore new nuclear bomb designs and fifteen million dollars to study modifying existing high-powered nuclear weapons so that they can destroy buried bunkers. These bombs would be called the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators" and would be a modification of existing hydrogen bombs. This proposed device would be able to burrow deep into the earth, and to create shock waves 300 meters below the surface which would be six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, experts say.
The figures given above are just a minor indicator of the overall nuclear re-vamping programme that is proposed and which runs into billions of dollars. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, proposals in President Bush's budget would refurbish virtually every facet of the nuclear weapon complex, re-building the country's nuclear weapons industry, and resume the production of nuclear components and materials, halted after the end of the cold war.
According to the same paper, the proposals include $ 320 million to build new plutonium cores-known as "pits", for nuclear war heads, $ 40 million of which would be used to design a plant capable of producing 500 such "pits" a year. An additional $ 135 million would go to restart production of tritium, which has not been produced by the government for more than a decade. Tritium is a gas which dramatically increases the force of thermo nuclear explosions.
In the words of Robert Civiak, a scientist and analyst on nuclear weapons spending, the fastest growing programme in the budget of National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees all nuclear weapons, is refurbishment of all the industrial machinery of nuclear warhead production. "People don't realize that we are getting back into the nuclear bomb business in a big way, and it is a very expensive business" said Joseph Cirinicione, director of the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The figures for America's stockpile of nuclear materials are mind-boggling, though these are classified. Some statistics are available in the US media. The Energy Department, in 1999, indicated that there were 12,000 plutonium pits in storage in Amarillo, Texas., in addition there are nearly 200 tons of highly enriched uranium at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist US officials maintain "we want a nuclear arsenal that would last forever."
Compare the above to the alleged production by Iran and North Korea! The charge is that nuclear weapons in the hands of "rogue" states are dangerous, but there were many hot-heads in America, including in the administration, during the Afghan and Iraq wars who openly advocated the use of nuclear bombs in these theatres.
Disarmament experts state "we are moving away from five decades of efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons." The question is, "does the United States need the additional nuclear weapons", especially given its growing conventional capabilities in precision guided munitions?
Remember four different aircraft simultaneously dropping 10,000 lb bombs each with precision hitting time on target, while aiming for Saddam Hussain's hideout in Baghdad. This was an improvement on the daisy cutter used in the caves of Tora Bora.
The impact of these four bombs together was greater than any conventional strike in the past. The irony is they still didn't hit Saddam Husain. And now the latest is MOAB (Mother of All Bombs), a 10,000 kg monster that would smother the target area with a flammable mist creating a powerful blast.
There is widespread anxiety about the latest turn in American nuclear plans. To quote one American activist from Berkley California "I don't know how President Bush and his administration imagine the future, but it can't be one dedicated to securing a peaceful co-existence in a prosperous international community, intent on maintaining a healthy well educated population. That future requires thoughtful approaches to allies and foes alike, to economies not solely governed by profits at the expense of subordinate population, to environments that support flourishing ecosystem, clean air water and land.
The Bush administration supports renewed nuclear studies and weapons testing and is in favour of a repeal on the ban on smaller more usable nuclear warheads. This support and the policy of military pre-emption is an extremely dangerous position to foster and perils all life. These are policies which must be challenged and defeated, if we, the general citizens of the world, are not to be held hostage to the narrower and most restrictive ideas of how the world is to be shaped and governed. The redesigning of nuclear weapons especially the production of low yield ones is going to definitively change the character of nuclear warfare. It implies a movement from pure deterrence, the philosophy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), to one of actual use - from the strategic to the tactical.
There could be great temptation to actual use of bombs like the bunker-busters in certain situations, especially where there may not be any possibility of nuclear retaliation. The obvious targets for the low - yield nuclear weapons and the bunker busters would be errant Third World Countries. This could set, off a chain reaction, encouraging others to do the same.
The threshold between conventional and nuclear warfare is becoming less distinct. This does not augur well for the future.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
GAO Suggests More Money for Nuke Cleanup
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
12/01/03
Associated Press
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-nuclear-fund,0,4991496.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
WASHINGTON -- Owners of nearly one-third of the nation's commercial power reactors are not setting aside enough money to pay for the plants' cleanup after the end of their useful life, congressional investigators said.
A report by the General Accounting Office, released Monday, said owners or co-owners of 42 reactors were not putting money into a cleanup fund at a rate to ensure that all decommissioning costs would be met once the reactors' operating license expires.
While in the aggregate the industry is ahead of schedule in building up the decommissioning fund, some companies have lagged behind in putting enough money aside to meet cleanup requirements, said the report by the GAO, Congress' investigative arm.
It said this could cause a problem because plant owners are not obligated to share cleanup funds.
The report also criticized the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, monitors decommissioning funds, saying the agency relies too heavily on the plant owners' anticipated future contributions without assurances such funds will be available.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, noted that as of 2000, $26.9 billion had been put into the fund, or 81 percent of the $33 billion that is expected to be needed for shutting down the nation's reactors and removing their radioactive materials.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never made findings that this funding is insufficient," said NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes.
He also said the GAO report did not take into consideration that "half of our industry already is in one stage or another of extending their licenses an additional 20 years." The report did take into account the 20-year license extensions already approved for 16 plants.
"We fully expect just about everyone is going toward license renewal," said Kerekes, meaning there will be an additional 20 years in virtually all cases involving operating plants to collect money for eventual decommissioning.
But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who had requested the report and released its findings Monday, said reactor owners are "happily pocketing their profits today (but) ... shirking their duty to save for (cleanup) tomorrow, potentially leaving the taxpayers on the hook."
The GAO also said the NRC is underestimating the potential problem by the way it calculates reactor decommissioning accounts. For example, it said, the agency relies on owners' statements on future funding plans that may, in fact, change.
In cases where a plant has more than one owner, it assumes that a fund held by one owner would be used to compensate for shortages in the other owners' fund, when in fact there is no obligation to do so, according to the GAO.
The NRC "can't guarantee that the companies that profited from selling nuclear energy will do their duty and clean up their mess," said Markey.
William Travers, executive director of operations at the NRC, said in a letter responding to the GAO conclusions that the agency's practice is to review "on a case-by-case basis" whether a licensee has accumulate sufficient money in the cleanup fund.
The NRC's "primary concern ... is to assure that licensees are accumulating fund at appropriate rates," Travers wrote.
On the Net
General Accounting Office: www.gao.gov
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov
Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org
----
Clean-up funds too low at 42 U.S. nuke plants-GAO
Reuters,
12.01.03,
By Tom Doggett
http://www.forbes.com/markets/commodities/newswire/2003/12/01/rtr1165355.html
WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp. (nyse: EXC - news - people), the Tennessee Valley Authority and other energy firms that own 42 U.S. nuclear power plants aren't setting aside enough money to pay for cleaning up the sites when their government licenses eventually expire, congressional investigators said on Monday.
While the collective status of the decommissioning accounts for the country's nuclear power plants has improved in recent years, the General Accounting Office said some individual plant owners are "not on track" to have sufficient shut-down funds.
The worst offenders are Exelon and the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), said the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress.
The trust funds for 11 of Exelon's 20 nuclear power plants and all six of TVA's plants are either below the benchmark or have too low a contribution rate to be fully funded by the time decommissioning takes place, the agency said.
Nine other owners have insufficient trust funds for two or more of their nuclear plants, and 29 are lagging on trust funds for a single plant, according to the GAO.
"Under our most likely assumptions, these owners will have to increase the rates at which they accumulate funds to meet their future decommissioning obligations," the agency said.
After the shutdown of a nuclear power plant and the removal of spent fuel, a nuclear facility remains a significant hazard until all radioactive materials are removed and the site is fully decommissioned.
In order to clean up the plants when are eventually retired, utility owners are required to pay into decommissioning trust funds over the lifetime of their plants.
The plants with the poorest decommissioning funds include Browns Ferry 1, 2 and 3 (Alabama); Dresden 1 (Illinois); Duane Arnold (Iowa); Indian Point 1 (New York); Peach Bottom 1 (Pennsylvania); Rancho Seco (California); and Zion 1 and 2 (Illinois).
Six of these 10 plants have already permanently shut down but are still awaiting full cleanup, according to Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts. Markey requested the GAO report and is one of the strongest nuclear industry critics in Congress.
"This report should open the eyes of the American people to the irresponsibility of many nuclear plant owners," said Markey. "While happily pocketing their profits today, many plant owners are shirking their duty to save for tomorrow."
Markey warned that if utilities do not set aside enough money, taxpayers may get stuck with billions of dollars in clean-up costs.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade group, said many of the utilities invest their decommissioning funds in the stock market and the GAO report reviewed the status of those funds during the year 2000, when there was a downturn in the market.
"It's not surprising that there may be some individual firms who may not be where they want to be" with their decommissioning funds, said a spokesman for the trade group. Many of the plant owners are seeking 20-year extensions on the original 40-year licenses for their facilities, which will give the firms more time to come up with the decommissioning funds that will be needed, the NEI spokesman added.
Government regulations limit commercial nuclear power plant licenses to an initial 40 years of operation, but licenses can be renewed for another 20 years if the plant can be operated safely over the extended period.
Of the 125 nuclear power plants that have been licensed in the United States since 1969, three have been completely decommissioned.
Of the remaining 122 plants, 104 have operating licenses and 18 plants have been shut down but not fully cleaned up.
-------- us politics
Bush Signs $27.3B Energy-And-Water Bill
12-01-03
AP
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/news/ap_story.html/Washington/AP.V9768.AP-Bush-Energy-Wat.html;COXnetJSessionID=1PROStn9jYME3NT5pnxL218FI0zjvSsTzRyx29XgzqR0KZ79C2I8!-388391923?urac=n&urvf=10705513109100.20084949971499289
WASHINGTON--President Bush on Monday signed a $27.3 billion energy and water bill that gave him less than he wanted for research on low-intensity nuclear weapons.
The bill, however, gave Bush most of what he sought for early work on a long-delayed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The legislation, which is packed with hundreds of water projects from coast to coast, including many the administration did not request, was approved by the House 387-36 and by the Senate on a voice vote.
The energy-water bill approved by the House provided half the $15 million Bush proposed for research on ``bunker buster'' bombs, designed to destroy underground targets.
It also had all $6 million he wanted for research into ``mini-nukes'' of less than 5 kilotons, though the administration will get $4 million of that amount only after giving lawmakers a report on the status of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The bill included $580 million for Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The spending, up $123 million from last year, was opposed by Nevada legislators who have long fought location of the waste site in their state.
The legislation funds programs of the Energy Department, the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and several other agencies.
----
Pushing Technology And Fighting Skeptics
Missile Defense to Be Deployed in Election Year
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17459-2003Nov27?language=printer
On his desk in a spacious corner office looking down on the Pentagon from a nearby hill, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish keeps a model of the plane the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
It reminds him of the skepticism the brothers confronted, a parallel that he sees with his own circumstance as director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
"The Wright brothers faced the same problem that we face with missile defense," he said in a recent interview. "They had eminent scientists of the day saying that man would never fly, and they were proving them wrong."
Kadish has been overseeing the controversial program since June 1999, having survived the change in administration from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. He is on track to becoming, after April, the longest-serving head of the missile defense program since President Ronald Reagan set up a separate Pentagon organization to manage the effort nearly 20 years ago.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has extended Kadish's tenure twice, keeping the general in place to prepare for the planned deployment in September 2004 of antimissile interceptors in Alaska and California.
"The secretary is interested in longevity in key positions," Kadish said. "And I think this is one area that he pays particular attention to."
Low-key and genial, with a round face and stocky build, Kadish came into the job with a reputation as a kind of Mr. Fix-It. He had turned around the Air Force's troubled C-17 cargo jet program, impressing Rumsfeld's predecessor, former senator William S. Cohen (R-Maine), who picked Kadish for missile defense.
The assignment has presented Kadish with what he describes as his most difficult career challenge.
"We know how to operate tanks and airplanes, but handing a long-range missile defense system to the services to operate requires a whole new set of thinking," he said.
The system that the Pentagon plans to deploy next year will rely on interceptor missiles launched from silos to chase down enemy warheads in space, a concept known as "hit to kill." Technical glitches and quality control problems in designing new boosters for the interceptors have slowed development and resulted in more than a year's delay in flight intercept tests.
Nonetheless, Kadish remains confident that President Bush's deployment deadline can be met. The timetable has the system starting as the 2004 presidential campaign enters its final weeks, although Kadish and other defense officials insist politics was not a factor in determining the schedule.
Critics in Congress, scientific circles and the arms control community continue to warn that the administration is rushing ahead with an approach that has yet to be adequately tested and is likely to prove unworkable or quickly become obsolete.
They complain that the administration has lowered the threshold for what is technologically acceptable, justifying its plan on grounds, as Rumsfeld has said, that something is better than nothing. They also accuse Kadish of pulling a veil over the program since last year.
"The program is not at all transparent," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. "I think General Kadish has instructions to be as minimally cooperative as he can be."
Kadish said the program must be cloaked in greater secrecy as it moves toward deployment to avoid revealing too much to potential enemies. But he insisted that members of Congress continue to receive ample information. "When it comes to the Hill, we bend over backwards," he said.
Kadish is widely credited, by opponents as well as proponents of the program, with showing care in public statements not to overstate what the planned system will be able to do. He has stressed that the initial setup will have very limited ability -- enough to shoot down only a handful of relatively simple warheads.
But while acknowledging technical limitations, Kadish has declared that the basic hit-to-kill approach is sound and ready for deployment. His detractors accuse him of adjusting his views to suit the administration's political aim of erecting some kind of system after decades of research and billions of dollars. The fiscal 2004 defense budget sets aside $9.1 billion for missile defense.
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, likens Kadish's willingness to endorse the administration's missile defense goal to CIA Director George J. Tenet's readiness, before the Iraq war, to support the view that Iraq's weapons programs posed an imminent threat to U.S. interests.
"Kadish has an obligation to be technically and scientifically honest about what the program can do, just as Tenet had an obligation to present honest assessments before the war," Kimball said.
Kadish said he has come under no pressure from the administration to shade judgments about system capabilities.
A source familiar with internal Pentagon deliberations on missile defense said some on Kadish's staff had shown "cultural resistance" to moving toward an operational system next year, preferring to stay focused on research. But Kadish favored turning a planned new test site in Alaska into an operational facility while continuing to use the site to test and improve the system.
Since the early months of the Bush administration, Kadish has worked closely with Rumsfeld to widen the range of technological options being explored, from ground- and sea-launched interceptors to airborne lasers and space-based weapons. At Kadish's urging, Rumsfeld last year freed the missile defense program from the detailed requirements that usually govern the development of major weapons.
The current plan calls essentially for Kadish and his team to build the best system they can in the near term, then improve on it in phases, or developmental "blocks," spaced in two-year intervals. No ultimate system architecture is specified. Instead, Kadish and other defense officials speak in broad terms of erecting a multilayered network of land-, sea- and air-based weapons that would target enemy missiles in all phases of flight.
Kadish said he reads as much history as he can -- biographies, military stories, accounts of past scientific and technological programs -- looking for ideas. But one of his biggest frustrations remains finding a way to avoid production quality problems.
The last attempted intercept test, for instance, failed because of a broken metal pin connecting a computer chip in the interceptor built by Raytheon Corp. More recently, the mixing of rocket propellants at a Pratt & Whitney facility triggered two accidental explosions, one killing an employee in September. This interrupted development of a new booster by Lockheed Martin Corp., leaving the Pentagon to proceed with an alternative rocket designed by Orbital Sciences Corp.
"What's been frustrating to me is that we've been failing on the quality side of technologies we've used before," Kadish said. "That I find totally unacceptable. . . . We'll just have to keep after it."
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went Sour
December 1, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01MISS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - It was Saddam Hussein's last weapons deal - and it did not go exactly as he and his generals had imagined.
For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.
The officials now say they believe that those negotiations - mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government - were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles.
Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials.
As war with the United States approached, though, the Iraqi files show that Mr. Hussein discovered what American officials say they have known for nearly a decade now: that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is less than a fully reliable negotiating partner.
In return for a $10 million down payment, Mr. Hussein appears to have gotten nothing.
The trail that investigators have uncovered, partly from reading computer hard drives found in Baghdad and partly from interviews with captured members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle, shows that a month before the American invasion, Iraqi officials traveled to Syria to demand that North Korea refund $1.9 million because it had failed to meet deadlines for delivering its first shipment of goods.
North Korea deflected the request, telling Mr. Hussein's representatives, in the words of one investigator, that "things were too hot" to begin delivering missile technology through Syria.
The transaction provides an interesting glimpse into the last days of the Hussein government, and what administration officials say were Iraq's desires for a long-term business deal for missiles and a missile production plant.
Bush administration officials have seized on the attempted purchase of the missiles, known as the Rodong, and a missile assembly line to buttress their case that Mr. Hussein was violating United Nations resolutions, which clearly prohibited missiles of the range of the Rodong.
It also establishes that Syria was a major arms-trading bazaar for the Hussein government, in this case hiding an Iraqi effort to obtain missiles, they say. Investigators say Syria had probably offered its ports and territory as the surreptitious transit route for the North Korea-Iraq missile deal, although it remains unclear what demands the government in Damascus might have made in return. Further, according to United States government officials and international investigators, the Iraqi official who brokered the deal, Munir Awad, is now in Syria, apparently living under government protection.
If it served as a middleman in this deal, as the documents suggest, Syria was acting in violation of Security Council resolutions even as it served on the Council and voted with the United States on the most important resolution before the war.
In an interview in Damascus on Sunday with The New York Times, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, was asked about the deal described in the Iraqi computer files and said, "This is the first time I have heard this story."
He said Mr. Hussein "was never able to trust Syria, and he never tried and we never tried to make any relation between him and any other country because he did not trust us in the first place." For all its complaints about arms smuggling across the Syrian-Iraq border, Mr. Assad said, the United States had never cited specific cases, adding, "I told the Americans if you have any evidence that there is smuggling of weapons into Iraq, please let us know."
International inspectors note that the missile deal gone bad appears to be the most serious violation that has been found so far.
The investigators say they tripped upon it while looking for something far more nefarious - evidence of a continuing nuclear program, or an active effort to accumulate more biological or chemical weapons.
"So far, there's really not much in that arena," said one official who has monitored the continuing search for weapons led by David Kay, a former weapons inspector who is now conducting the search for the Central Intelligence Agency.
After spending tens of millions of dollars in a search that continues on the ground in Iraq to this day, the official noted, "We've learned this much: that Kim Jong Il took Saddam to the cleaners."
The first clue of the North Korea-Iraq deal surfaced in public in October when Dr. Kay released preliminary findings of his inquiry into Mr. Hussein's program for developing unconventional weapons. Dr. Kay said his team had uncovered evidence that Iraq had negotiated a deal with North Korea to acquire missiles, a transaction that a senior administration official said was apparently never detected by American intelligence agencies.
But when it came time for the North Koreans to deliver on the deal they demurred, according to an Iraqi account of the meeting in Syria that international inspectors found on an Iraqi computer hard drive. According to the files, the North Koreans said Iraq was under too much American scrutiny. Evidence amassed since the invasion of Iraq indicates the deal was for more than just missiles.
"This $10 million was a down payment, and not just a straight purchase for Rodong missiles, but for Rodong technology," said one American official who has read documentation on the deal. "Saddam's intent was to get the expertise from the North Koreans and, potentially, open his own production line." If the American interpretation is right, it is unclear where Mr. Hussein might have built the production line or how it could have avoided detection by American satellites.
The exact outlines of the deal remain unclear, the official said, "since the North Koreans ended up stiffing the Iraqis." The Iraqis were demanding their money back, "right up to the end," the official said.
American investigators say they have been able to discern outlines of the murky deal. The $10 million was too much to buy simply a missile or two, American and international experts say, and too little for an entire production line, leading to the conclusion that it was a down payment.
Investigators said information downloaded from Iraqi computer hard drives, at least one of which was obtained before the invasion of Iraq, allowed them to more specifically interrogate detained members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle. They, in turn, guided investigators deeper into the mountain of official documents seized during the war.
"You do that, sort of a back-and-forth process," said one American official. "You find something on a computer disk or in the pile of documents slowly being translated. That makes you ask questions of the detainees. Then you bounce back to the documents and so forth. That's how you get the bigger picture."
Administration officials say investigators found evidence of meetings between the Iraqis and North Koreans as least as far back as late 2001.
One administration official said American intelligence had evidence that "the agents from North Korea flew into Syria - that's where the first meeting took place." Other officials said at least one round of talks was held in North Korea.
The final session was held in Syria in February of this year, just before the war began, officials said. On that trip, according to the Iraqi account of the meeting in Syria, the Iraqis were also seeking night-vision goggles, ammunition and gun barrels - mostly through European middlemen. At that point, a huge American-British force had been built up on Iraq's southern borders, and it was clear that war was coming.
What is also interesting about the shopping list, however, is "what's not on it," said one investigator. "Nothing nuclear, no dual-use items, nothing about weapons of mass destruction."
American officials said the failed missile deal was brokered by an Iraqi firm called Al Bashair Trading Company, also spelled Al Bashir in some documents, which has been identified by American investigators as having had past involvement in arms trade for Iraq conducted with Yugoslavia.
The company reported directly to the Iraqi military command, investigators said, and had close ties to one of Mr. Hussein's sons, Qusay, who was killed in a battle with American troops in July.
The negotiations with the North Koreans were conducted by Munir Awad, the senior officer of Al Bashair, American and international investigators said.
"Munir Awad is one of three men who personally oversaw the most sensitive transfers of money from Al Bashair to other front companies and governments and worked directly for Qusay Hussein," said one American official. "Awad is believed to be in Syria under the protection of the Syrian government."
----
Republican Blocks Bush Arms Export Plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 1, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Exports.html?ei=1&en=08f08414e68cc879&ex=1071430470&pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Bush administration plan to make it easier for U.S. companies to sell weapons to Britain and Australia is being blocked by a top Republican congressman concerned about American arms falling into wrong hands.
U.S. officials have been unable to persuade Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, that the changes will not only strengthen two close allies of the United States, but actually improve the monitoring of weapons exports.
While the issue has received little public attention, it was a high enough priority to prompt Secretary of State Colin Powell to go to Capitol Hill on Nov. 14 to meet with Hyde and the committee's top Democrat, California Rep. Tom Lantos just hours after Powell returned from a trip to Britain with President Bush. Lantos also opposes granting the exemptions.
During the trip to Britain, Bush discussed the export rules with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The proposed changes would allow U.S. companies to export some non-classified weapons and arms-related technology to certain British and Australian companies without having to seek an export license. That license requirement is part of the Arms Export Control Act.
The United States has already negotiated separate agreements with both countries over how the exports would be controlled. But those agreements depend on Congress allowing the exemptions to the law.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee included the exemptions in its bill authorizing 2004 State Department programs, but that bill has not been considered by the full Senate. The House approved its own version of the bill, but because of Hyde's objections, did not include the exemptions. Instead, that bill would allow the State Department to speed up the licensing process for the two nations.
Hyde did not respond to requests for an interview. But he spelled out his concerns in a May 5 letter to Powell. Hyde wrote that a trend toward relaxing arms export controls ``seems unwise and particularly incongruous with the increased threats to U.S. security and foreign policy interests since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.''
``Lowering our country's standards for munitions and other arms-related transfers in part because it is advantageous to U.S. companies can only make more complicated the already difficult job you have'' in persuading other nations to tighten export controls, Hyde wrote.
``This is a moment in our nation's history when it behooves us to strengthen, not relax, international standards for nonproliferation and military export controls.''
The State Department says the changes would result in greater assurances that the exported products would not be sent to a third country or otherwise used improperly. Companies that receive products under the exemptions would have to demonstrate to their own governments that they are adhering to export rules, the department official said. Foreign companies receiving products under export licenses do not have the same obligations.
The Aerospace Industries Association supports granting the exemptions, though it doesn't expect it to have a big impact on British or American companies, said Joel Johnson, the manufacturers group's vice president for international affairs.
Johnson said it's pointless to maintain these export restrictions on an ally like Britain with whom the United States already shares extremely sensitive intelligence. Noting the British government's support for the Iraq war, he said ``it took an enormous political cost domestically to be there when we wanted them, and we turn around and tell them we don't trust them with unclassified information.''
The State Department official said discussions with Hyde are expected to continue. With the bill authorizing programs unlikely to be considered soon, the department hopes the exemptions might be included in other legislation.
-------- asia
A new era in Azerbaijan
December 01, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
By S. Rob Sobhani
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031130-111255-6658r.htm
The ongoing turmoil inGeorgiathat forced the resignation of President EduardShevardnadze highlights the difficulty former Soviet republics are encountering in making a smooth transition from authoritarianism to democratic pluralism. In neighboringAzerbaijan, arguablyAmerica's strongest ally in the former Soviet Union, this transition has lead to the recent election of Ilham Aliyev, the 42-year-old son of and presidential successor to Heydar Aliyev, a man who has dominated the political landscape of this oil-rich country for over 40 years. While some in the State Department have questioned aspects of this election, Washington must now make every effort to work with the clear winner to ensure a smooth transition that can further enhance the lives of the people of Azerbaijan and advance America's interests in this increasingly important part of the world.
I first met Ilham Aliyev in 1993, during his first visit to the United States. He had come to meet with senior officials of Amoco Corp. (now part of British Petroleum, or BP) and to determine how his country could best benefit by partnering with American energy companies. Upon his return to Baku, Ilham Aliyev was assigned by his father to head the delegation that ultimately negotiated the landmark U.S.-led multinational agreement to develop the giant oil fields of the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. Realizing that Azerbaijan's landlocked position required a dependable pipeline to carry its oil to international markets, Ilham Aliyev (and the team he assembled) worked closely with U.S. officials to ensure that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) became a reality. Today, the BTC pipeline is the anchor of U.S. interests in the energy-rich Caspian Sea region.
Since that first visit, Ilham Aliyev has become a frequent visitor to Washington, representing his country in bilateral talks with senior U.S. officials on national security (tracking down al Qaeda), trade and energy issues. Despite claims to the contrary from some in the opposition, Ilham Aliyev has included members of the "responsible opposition" in almost all of his official oversees visits.
As the newly elected President of Azerbaijan, this close friend of the United States faces a number of challenges that should be of concern to Washington. One of the biggest challenges facing President Aliyev is how to tackle what is perhaps the most horrific vestige of the Soviet-era - corruption. According to Western oil executives working in Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev has been responsible for keeping corruption out of the critical oil sector of the economy. The non-oil sector, however, has been beset by rampant corruption and is in need of leadership from the new president in order to attract the foreign investment needed to diversify Azerbaijan's oil-dependent economy. The United States should provide Ilham Aliyev with every tool it can to ensure that the non-oil sector is revived. A visit by CommerceSecretaryDon Evans, accompanied by CEOs from major U.S. corporations, would be a good start.
The second most important challenge facing the new President Aliyev is a long-awaited settlement of the war with Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh. While the conflict may best be described as being in a state of frozen instability, Mr. Aliyev wants to settle this issue in a peaceful manner that allows the 1 million refugees to return to their homes. Washington would be well-served to warn Armenia not to take advantage of this transition in Baku in order to restart the waroverNagorno-Karabagh. Beyond this warning to Armenia, Secretary of State Colin Powell must get involved personally in the resolution of this conflict that still threatens to engulf the region if left unresolved.
Beyond the threat of a resumption of the war with Armenia, the new President Aliyev's most worrisome foreign policy challenge is the continued pressure exerted by the clerics in Tehran to turn this secular Shi'ite Muslim state into an Islamic republic. Washington needs to send a very strongly worded letter to the Iranian government stating that the U.S. will not tolerate any interference in Azerbaijan's internal affairs, including the intimidation of companies exploring for oil in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea. The United States should use this opportunity to insist that Iran end its hostile actions towards the Anglo-American giant BP, and allow BP to explore the Alov structure that may contain as much as 9 billion barrels of oil reserves.Of course, the best signalthatWashington could send Tehran would be to invite Ilham Aliyev to the White House for a working visit with President Bush.
In exchange for our steadfast support of his new presidency, Washington must work with Mr. Aliyev to ensure that he moves Azerbaijan towards a more open political system with economic transparency in order to avoid the chaos that grips Georgia today.This would mean the empowerment, not disenfranchisement, of Azerbaijan's responsible opposition. And it would mean the beginning of a healthy, diverse economy.
The United States has a vested interest in President Ilham Aliyev's success. The majority of those eligible to vote among the seven million citizens of this country voted for Mr. Aliyev in order to preserve the legacy of his father - stability. It is in America's interest that Azerbaijan's transition to a more open and pluralistic society be anchored in stability.
S. Rob Sobhani is president of Caspian Energy Consulting and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
--------
Despite Danger, Japan Says, Its Troops Will Still Go to Iraq
December 1, 2003
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/asia/01JAPA.html
TOKYO, Nov. 30 - Japan said Sunday that it still planned to send ground troops to Iraq despite the killing of two Japanese diplomats there, apparently in a terrorist attack.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said the deaths, the first suffered by Japan in the Iraq conflict, would not alter the government's policy toward Iraq, including sending noncombat Self-Defense Forces troops. He said, though, that the government was still reviewing the appropriate place and time for the dispatch.
"There will be no change in Japan's policy of providing humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in Iraq by sending people regardless of whether they are Self-Defense Forces troops, civilians or government officials," Mr. Koizumi said.
"Japan should not be intimidated by terrorism," he said, adding that he was "furious."
The killing of the diplomats put Mr. Koizumi's administration in an increasingly difficult position. At home, the main opposition Democratic Party gained a significant number of seats in November elections and is certain to intensify its criticism of the deployment plans.
Abroad, the Japanese government, which has already twice postponed deployment because of the rising violence in Iraq and opposition here, is under pressure to fulfill its pledge to raise its international role. Failing to deploy troops could weaken Japan's credibility with Washington.
For the Bush administration, the deaths of the two Japanese - as well as the killings on Sunday of two South Korean electrical company workers on the same road to Tikrit - could further complicate the participation in Iraq of Asian allies of the United States. In South Korea, political divisions and public opposition have curtailed talk of sending several thousand combat and noncombat troops. South Korea is now considering sending 3,000 noncombat troops to join about 700 already in Iraq.
The Japanese diplomats - Masamori Inoue, 30, a third secretary from the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, and Katsuhiko Oku, 45, a counselor from the Japanese Embassy in London - were killed, apparently in an ambush, on Saturday around 5 p.m. near Tikrit.
"There is a strong possibility that terrorists were involved," said Yasuo Fukuda, the chief cabinet secretary and government spokesman. "This is how it looks to us."
The government released few details of the killings, saying that the diplomats had been on their way to Tikrit to attend a conference on the reconstruction of northern Iraq. They rode in a lightly armored Toyota Land Cruiser and were not accompanied by guards.
Gunmen shot at the diplomats after they stopped to buy food and drinks outside the village of Mukayshifa on the road between Tikrit and Baghdad, according to Lt. Col. William MacDonald, a United States military spokesman in Iraq.
Although it was still unclear whether the killings were politically motivated, or a simple robbery, they followed two recent incidents that have heightened Japanese fear over their participation in the war in Iraq. In the last two weeks, shots were fired around the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, and a purported message from Al Qaeda warned that Tokyo would be attacked as soon as Japanese troops set foot in Iraq.
The Koizumi government passed a special law over the summer allowing the deployment of its Self-Defense Forces to Iraq despite the country's pacifist Constitution. In recent months, Japan, which has not had a soldier die in conflict since the end of World War II, has been agonizing over when to dispatch the troops.
When 17 Italian troops and 2 civilians were killed recently in southern Iraq, the Koizumi government said it would not send troops before the end of the year, as had been planned. But most political experts here believe that the government has come too far to renege on its commitment.
"Japan will be laughed at if it says it will cancel the deployment because Japanese have been attacked," Masashi Nishihara, president of the National Defense Academy, said in a telephone interview.
Still, public opinion stands overwhelmingly against the deployment. Mr. Koizumi could also face opposition inside his own party. Koichi Kato, a lawmaker and a close ally of Mr. Koizumi, said on television on Sunday that he opposed the dispatch. "The war was a mistake," Mr. Kato said.
--------
Japanese Premier Affirms Pledge on Troops
Anthony Faiola and Sachiko Sakamaki
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 1, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23655-2003Nov30.html
TOKYO, Nov. 30 -- A day after two Japanese diplomats were killed in an ambush in Iraq, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed Sunday not to "give in to terrorism" and reaffirmed his country's commitment to send noncombat troops to aid the U.S.-led reconstruction effort.
The deaths, which caused shock in Japan, were likely to complicate Koizumi's already unpopular efforts to commit troops to Japan's first foreign military deployment since World War II, analysts said.
Seiji Maehara, a legislator from the opposition Democratic Party, said on Sunday that the killings showed that Iraq was too dangerous. "We are opposed" to sending troops, he said. Some members of Koizumi's own ruling Liberal Democratic Party agreed.
The two diplomats -- Katsuhiko Oku, 45, head of the cultural affairs section of the Japanese Embassy in London, and Masamori Inoue, 30, second secretary at Japan's mission in Baghdad -- were killed near Tikrit while en route to a conference on reconstruction in northern Iraq.
"Our basic stance has not changed," Koizumi said. "Whether Self-Defense Forces or civilians, we will do what we have to do."
On Sunday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi with U.S. condolences.
-------- britain
HARTLEPOOL JOURNAL
British Greet Navy Rustbuckets With a Volley of Venom
December 1, 2003
LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/europe/01HART.html
HARTLEPOOL, England - The arrival of a couple of decrepit United States Navy ships has set off protests seldom seen in this job-hungry town, which for decades held its tongue, and its nose, as it welcomed petrochemical plants, steel and coal companies, and a nuclear power plant.
The ships - two mammoth, rusted-out, 58-year-old vessels - bob alongside the docks of a salvage yard, waiting, perhaps indefinitely, to be stripped of their toxic innards and recycled for their steel. Two other decommissioned Navy ships, both auxiliary oil tankers when they were in their prime, were also headed to the yard from Virginia to face a similarly uncertain future.
The crux of the tug of war is this: the United States government is under a 2006 deadline to scrap or dispose of a backlog of 130 obsolete "ghost" ships, 90 of which make up its "James River Reserve Fleet," an eyesore floating on the James River near Newport News, Va.
American companies lack the capacity to scrap all the ships by the deadline, at least not at an affordable price, so the Maritime Administration, the arm of the United States Transportation Department that oversees the building and scrapping of ships, contracted the work to foreign companies.
Able UK, which specializes in dismantling and recycling mostly oil rigs and power stations, won a $17.8 million contract to dismantle 13 ships. Britain granted the necessary permits, and the first two ships, pulled by Dutch tugs, set sail Oct. 6. Residents near the James River were overjoyed.
When news articles appeared that the ships would be heading to Hartlepool, residents here grew concerned about the environmental dangers. They discussed the issue at tea-and-coffee meetings three months ago but the debate has now snowballed into a court battle. Protests have turned nasty and one local politician resigned from the Labor Party. The high court is expected to decide the issue in December.
The first two ships are empty of hazardous cargo but contain 61 tons of asbestos built into their engine rooms and 34.1 tons of solid polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) in wiring and gaskets.
In their liquid form, PCB's are suspected of causing cancer. The ships are also carrying a modest 105 tons of oil (tankers often carry thousands of tons of oil).
In total, as both sides in the dispute agree, 98 percent of the ships can be recycled and about 2 percent must be disposed of as toxic waste.
The Maritime Administration and Able UK say the environmental dangers are minimal. The job, Able UK officials argue, will not only create temporary work for 200 people but is one of the simplest and smallest it has ever undertaken.
Peter Stephenson, an Able UK executive, acknowledged that his company had never handled large ships but said it specialized in dismantling huge oil rigs and power stations, which are more difficult to break down safely. Each power station is about the size of 5 to 10 of those ships, he said.
"And each power station has about 200 times more asbestos than all these ships put together," Mr. Stephenson said.
The British Environmental Agency has said that the ships posed no danger and that Able UK had the proper facilities to handle them safely.
The Maritime Administration is no less flummoxed. Before 1991, the government did not pay to scrap its ships, sending them instead to developing countries with few environmental safeguards. That practice was stopped, and now the government, unlike commercial ship owners, is held to much higher environmental standards.
Blindsided by the opposition, company officials and national politicians blame environmentalists for whipping up an ill-informed frenzy. Britons, as politicians point out, need little prodding after the war in Iraq to jump for the Yankee jugular.
"The only off-putting image is by those who don't base their statements on facts and talk of dangerous toxic wastes," scolded Peter Mandelson, the influential member of Parliament who represents Hartlepool, in a rant against the local press and local politicians.
"It's a false picture designed to mislead people and in the process it creates a negative image of the town," he added, shortly after touring the Able UK salvage yard.
Residents, and activists from Friends of the Earth, which has helped organize local opposition, disagree, and say simply that toxic waste is, in short, toxic.
"We don't want it," said Geoff Lilley, 53, a retired city councilor who argues that the bulk of the opposition comes from Hartlepool residents and not "tree-huggers."
From the sunroom in his modest home, a pair of binoculars at the ready for bird watching in his immaculate garden, Mr. Lilley went on to say that he could not fathom why the "most powerful, wealthiest and one would argue, most civilized country on the planet" was unable to deal with its own waste.
-------- business
Boeing's Chief Steps Down a Week After Firings Over Ethics
December 1, 2003
By KENNETH N. GILPIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/business/01CND-BOEING.html?hp
Facing challenges from abroad and in Washington, the Boeing Company announced this morning that Phil Condit, the company's chairman and chief executive, had tendered his resignation, effective immediately.
While it was termed a resignation, the company made it plain that Mr. Condit had been forced out.
"After thorough deliberations, the board decided that a new structure for the leadership is needed," Boeing said in a prepared news release.
Mr. Condit, who is 62, will be succeeded by Harry C. Stonecipher, 67, as president and chief executive.
Lewis E. Platt, 62, was named as non-executive chairman.
Mr. Condit's resignation comes less than a week after Boeing fired Michael Sears, the company's chief financial officer, and Darleen Druyun, after determining that Mr. Sears had improperly met with Ms. Druyun at a time when she was the chief procurement officer for the Department of the Air Force.
At issue, according to an in-house investigation Boeing is conducting as well as a similar inquiry being run out of the Pentagon, was Boeing's conduct in its efforts to win $17 billion worth of contracts for aerial tankers.
Boeing won the contracts following a heated competition with Airbus Industrie.
Ms. Druyun went to work for Boeing as a program manager last January.
In announcing the firings last week, Boeing said that during its investigation it discovered that Mr. Sears and Ms. Druyun had attempted to conceal the meeting. Mr. Sears had been widely viewed as a potential successor to Mr. Condit.
Late last week, two Republican Senators asked the Pentagon to reconsider the planned Boeing tanker deal. In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
the senators, John McCain of Arizona and Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, said they "believe it is imperative" the Pentagon "determine what effect this apparent conflict of interest may have had."
In addition to its difficulties in Washington, Boeing has been struggling to regain footing lost during the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the commercial aircraft business. Increasingly, the company has been fighting an uphill battle against Airbus.
Just this morning, Airbus announced that it had won a $1 billion-plus contract with Qantas, the Australian airline, for a commercial jet contract.
In the company statement, Mr. Condit said "I offered my resignation as a way to put distractions and controversies of the past year behind us."
Mr. Platt, a Boeing board member and the former chairman and chief executive of the Hewlett-Packard Company, said "we accepted his resignation with sadness, but also with the knowledge that changes needed to be made."
Mr. Stonecipher, who retired from Boeing in 2002, is the former president and chief executive of McDonnell Douglas.
Along with Mr. Condit, he helped to engineer the merger of McDonnell Douglas with Boeing in 1997.
Following the combination, Mr. Stonecipher served as Boeing's president and chief operating officer.
-------- china / taiwan
Taiwan, US to hold defense talks, computer war simulation
TAIPEI (AFP)
Dec 01, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031201054418.rui2br1o.html
Taiwan and the United States are to hold comprehensive defense talks and a computer war simulation later this month, defense officials said Monday amid rising tensions with rival China.
Vice defense minister Lin Chung-pin and vice chief of the general staff Chu Kai-sheng are scheduled to leave for Washington Friday, leading a high-profile military mission for comprehensive talks on arms deals, Taiwan's security and bilateral cooperation, the United Daily News said.
The two-week visit would be the largest in scope in Taiwan-US military talks, it added.
A computer war game would be jointly held in Hawaii December 15-17 when the delegates visit the US Pacific Command, the paper said.
The announcement came as tensions between Taipei and Beijing continued to build following president Chen Shui-bian's weekend decision to hold a sovereignty referendum.
The move is expected to further flare military threats from Beijing, which considers the island part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.
Lin told parliament the engagements would cover "routine military exchanges under the framework of Taiwan Relations Act".
He declined to give details of the visit, citing national interests as stipulated in the act, which governs bilateral issues with the US in the absence of diplomatic ties.
"Even if there is a computer war game, it will be routine and planned a long time ago," Lin said.
The paper said the war simulation was prompted by the need for the US to update its military contingency plans given escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Washington has observed the One-China policy -- that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of the Chinese territory -- since it switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
But it has remained the island's leading arms supplier.
Chen made the pledge as Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, in a visit to Germany, warned Taiwan against holding a referendum on independence and that China had the means to defend its sovereignty.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 at the end of a civil war. Although the island has since been governed separately, Beijing has repeatedly threatened war against the island should its leaders try to push for formal independence.
The "sovereignty referendum" was proposed after Taiwan's parliament passed Thursday a bill allowing referendums on constitutional amendments but set hurdles on sensitive issues such as independence and changes to the country's official name, flag and territory.
Chen based the rationale for the sovereignty referendum on a clause that empowers the president to initiate a public vote once the country's sovereignty is threatened by a foreign force.
The US says it does not support independence nor the resort to force to settle cross-strait disputes.
-------- colombia
Demobilized in Colombia
December 01, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031130-111242-3316r.htm
The sight of weapons piling up as Colombian paramilitary fighters gave up their arms Tuesday was impressive. But success will depend on a better-defined decommissioning and negotiating effort. Witnessing the televised coverage of 800 paramilitary fighters surrendering their weapons surely had a positive psychological impact in Colombia, and represents a victory in the government's non-military approach to stopping the four-decades-long civil war, which has claimed about 40,000 lives. The government has enhanced the likelihood the fighters will successfully reintegrate into society by enrolling them in a job-training or education program. But given the scale and ferocity of the conflict, and the abundant drug proceeds which finance it, the fighters and arms retired on Tuesday could be replaced almost instantaneously. This is made more probable by the fact that no paramilitary leaders surrendered on Tuesday.
Support for the government's demobilization initiative has also been undermined by the ambiguity surrounding it. Given the military might of rebel and paramilitary forces in Colombia, any resolution of the civil war must entail demobilization deals which include immunity from prosecution, at least in some cases. However, demobilization should not be pursued at any price, and some sort of accountability must be established. Immunity must be at least conditioned on a full disclosure of an individual's crimes ? in the spirit of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Fighters must detail, quite literally, where the bodies are buried, so Colombians can finally put to rest their loved ones' remains. Also, the government should at some point set a deadline for demobilization deals. Those groups that don't meet it should face the full force of the law.
It remains unclear what the government's terms are for demobilization agreements. Rebel and paramilitary leaders won't give themselves up until they know precisely what they will get in return.
The United States has played a prominent role in Colombia's counter-terror and drug initiatives, providing $1.3 billion in aid under President Clinton and another $2 billion under President Bush. It has recently initiated free-trade talks with Colombia, which will bolster President Andres Pastrana.
The Bush administration should also soberly analyze its strategies in Colombia, and ensure that U.S.-backed measures bolster the government's prospects for success. If coca eradication efforts, for example, are deemed to be a tactical liability, then the United States should shift its focus and aid to support better border patrol and interdiction efforts.
Tuesday's decommissioning was a step in the right direction. Mr. Pastrana faces daunting odds in Colombia, but he has demonstrated an unwavering will to establish stability for his people, and he has their overwhelming support.
-------- iraq
Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say
December 1, 2003
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 1 - American military officials said today that a pair of ambushes of American forces in central Iraq on Sunday reflected a level of planning, scale and coordination not seen among guerrilla forces since the regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted last spring.
"Are we looking at this one closely? Yes." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said today. "Is this something larger than we have seen over the past couple of months? Yes. Are we concerned about it? Yeah, we will look at it and we will take the appropriate measures."
American forces killed 54 people in the intense firefight in the town of Samarra after soldiers delivering Iraqi currency to two banks were bombarded with small-arms and antitank-grenade fire, General Kimmitt, a senior military spokesman, said. He added that 22 attackers had been wounded and that one had been detained. On Sunday, the military put the number of Iraqis killed at 46.
A military statement said that "many of the dead attackers were found wearing fedayeen uniforms," a reference to the militias loyal to Mr. Hussein that put up some of the fiercest resistance to the American-led invasion last spring.
American military officials said that the attackers had been moving in cars, had split their force of 30 to 40 people into smaller groups at each bank, and had set up ambush points on routes into and out of the city.
"It is our belief that this was a coordinated effort," Col. Frederick Rudesheim told reporters at a news conference outside Samarra today. He said the attackers had launched the ambush with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
The Associated Press quoted residents in Samarra as saying that American forces had responded by firing at random, prompting civilians to get guns and join the fight. The news agency said many civilians had expressed bitterness about recent American raids in the night.
Military officials said the clash was the largest battle in the country since coalition forces toppled the Hussein government last spring. They originally reported that at least 18 of the attackers had been wounded and 11 had been captured. General Kimmitt did not explain the discrepancies in the figures given on Sunday and today. No American deaths were reported.
The soldiers, members of the Fourth Infantry Division, met simultaneous ambushes on two convoys rolling separately through Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, according to a division spokesman, Master Sgt. Robert Cargie.
The convoys were delivering new Iraqi dinars to two banks and were guarded by about 100 American soldiers. When the shooting began, the Americans responded with automatic-rifle fire, Bradley fighting vehicles and other weapons, officials said.
Afterward, large shell casings, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles were strewn across the field of battle. So were dozens of bodies, apparently all Iraqi, many clad in the ninja-like black uniforms of fedayeen paramilitary fighters loyal to the overthrown Hussein government, according to Sergeant Cargie. Five American soldiers and one civilian traveling with one of the convoys were wounded.
Coalition firepower overwhelmed the attackers, Sergeant Cargie said.
The American display of firepower was among the most deadly for Iraqi fighters since the occupation began. But residents and police officers in Samarra said that less than a dozen Iraqis had been killed and contended that many of the wounded were civilians, The A.P. reported from the scene. The residents were clearly incensed at the immense firepower used by the Americans.
The battle came on the final day of the bloodiest month for American soldiers in Iraq, with 81 dead, almost half of those in helicopter crashes linked to enemy fire. By contrast, in April, at the height of the invasion, 73 Americans died in Iraq.
Samarra is just south of Tikrit, the birthplace of Mr. Hussein and a stronghold of Baathist Party supporters and Iraqis hostile to the occupation. An Associated Press reporter there this morning described cars in the street riddled with bullet holes, buildings bearing the marks of sustained, heavy gunfire, and a bus with its front sheared off.
Another shootout broke out in the city at 2:25 p.m. on Sunday, when four men in a black BMW fired automatic weapons at soldiers of the 244th Engineer Battalion, Sergeant Cargie said. The soldiers shot back and wounded all four men. A search of the car found three AK-47 rifles and two rocket-propelled grenades, Sergeant Cargie added.
Military officials did not report the battle until late Sunday, even though a senior military spokesman, General Kimmitt, held a routine news conference on operations at 5 p.m. on Sunday. Much of that briefing centered on the increasing danger to civilians.
The three foreign contractors killed on Sunday near Samarra died within 24 hours of two roadside ambushes that left nine people dead, all from America's coalition allies and all wearing civilian clothes at the time.
Two of the three people killed on Sunday were South Korean electricians and one was Colombian; they died in two separate attacks on their cars. On Saturday, two Japanese diplomats stopping for food were ambushed and killed on the same road, while seven Spaniards traveling in a two-car convoy were killed by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades south of Baghdad.
At his Sunday afternoon briefing, General Kimmitt said the guerrillas seemed to be focusing less on military targets and more on civilians. "The enemy realizes that attacking a military target will probably lead to his death or capture," he said. "And going against soft targets is probably an easier way to achieve what the enemy is trying to achieve."
General Kimmitt said the Colombian contractor killed Sunday morning was traveling in a convoy near the town of Balad, about an hour's drive north of Baghdad. Attackers fired on the convoy with small arms. Two of the contractor's colleagues were wounded.
The two South Koreans were ambushed near Samarra on the way to Tikrit, where they worked at an electric power-transmission station, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, quoting the country's Foreign Ministry director. They were employees of a company based in Seoul that is under contract to lay power lines for an American company. Two of their colleagues were wounded in the attack, and one was in critical condition.
A spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, Lt. Col. William MacDonald, told The A.P. that the killings of the South Koreans were unrelated to the convoy attacks.
South Korea, an important United States ally planning to send troops to Iraq, said today that the killing of two of its citizens on Sunday was "intolerable," but it did not take steps to scale down or revise a deployment that the government announced earlier.
"The incident will not affect the government's policy of dispatching troops," Foreign Minister Yoon Young Kwan said at a televised news conference in South Korea.
Public opinion in South Korea has been sharply divided, prompting Seoul to set a limit of 3,000 troops while continuing to weigh when and what types of soldiers to send. President Roh Moo Hyun recently dispatched a second fact-finding team to assess the level of security in Iraq after a report by an earlier mission failed to convince a skeptical public.
--------
Iraqi Council Agrees on National Elections
December 1, 2003
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01COUN.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 30 - The Iraqi Governing Council, responding to demands from senior Shiite clergymen, agreed by a unanimous vote on Sunday that full national elections would be the best way to choose an interim government in June.
But several members said they were not sure it would be possible to organize national elections in the coming months, so the council established a committee that is to examine the question and report in two weeks.
Even a religious Shiite member of the council, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who is a strong advocate of elections, acknowledged in an interview that there were "political and technical difficulties."
The Governing Council also reached consensus, several members said, that it would not dissolve after the new interim government was formed this summer. Previously, leaders of the council had said they did not want to disband, but the council as a group had not agreed to that until the question was put to the body on Saturday.
Last week, an American official said occupation authorities "have concerns" about this idea, but American officials could not be reached for comment on Sunday evening. Council members said occupation officials had given them no official reaction to their plan to remain in office.
The issue of a national vote arose last week when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation's most influential Shiite cleric, made public his opposition to the indirect, caucus-style elections envisioned in the American plan to grant Iraq self-rule by next summer.
Ayatollah Sistani said an election that important needed to be put to the entire Iraqi public, an announcement that threw the self-rule plan into disarray.
The council vote on Sunday seemed to be an effort to show the ayatollah that the council took his concerns seriously without formally adopting his proposal. If a national election is not feasible, then the multistep American plan, or some version of it, may still emerge as the blueprint for selecting a provisional government.
One council member, Hamid Majeed Mousa of the Iraqi Communist Party, who attended the discussion, said "there is no one on the Governing Council who would refuse to hold elections; it's the perfect way for a democracy. But is it possible to do?" After enumerating the difficulties - the lack of a voter role, the continuing violence that would likely disrupt the election - Mr. Mousa concluded that "we most probably will not have general elections."
Since Iraq has no voter rolls, and officials say it would be difficult if not impossible to compile any by next summer, Mr. Rubaie and others have proposed using the United Nations food rations registry as a basis for a voter list. That is the most complete list of the Iraqi population. But during the council discussion on Sunday, several members noted that it was imperfect at best.
"They said the food ration system has many negative sides," said Subhi al-Jumaily, an aide to Mr. Mousa. "In the Saddam regime, they would punish the opposition by taking away the cards."
As an example, records of the Baath Party, Mr. Hussein's political base, showed that the Hussein government routinely took food ration cards away from families of men who deserted from the army. Presumably the registry would not list those families, so they would not have the right to vote.
The charter of the nine-member council committee examining the issue of elections is to find a way to hold elections that will include as many Iraqis as possible.
While the manner of the vote in June remains in dispute, interviews with council members show wide agreement to the general time line set out in the self-rule agreement. Specifically, all sides agree that an interim government should remain in place for one or two years, as set out in the plan, to give the Iraqi people time to adjust to their new circumstance.
"The Shia felt persecuted under the former regime," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a religious member of the council who is close to Mr. Sistani, said in an interview.
"The Kurds and the Sunni are afraid of a Shiite government," he added. "All parties have these kinds of anxieties. That is why it is important to have a transitional period to allay all these concerns."
The council members settled on the likely political uncertainty that may prevail next summer as the reason for deciding that they should remain in power even after they had promised to dissolve. When the idea was first raised last week, various council members had a variety of explanations for the proposal. But now they appear to have settled on one.
"The Governing Council is playing a big role in the political process right now," Mr. Mousa said, echoing remarks by several members in recent days. "As you look at this whole process, there will be a political gap next summer. Who will have the authority? In other countries they have a president or a queen or a king. So we have to be the ones here to monitor the situation and supervise implementation of the agreement."
He and others said the council had not worked out exactly what statutory authority it would have or what the council would call itself.
"I like State Council," Mr. Mousa said. "Other people are talking about Sovereignty Council. And some people want to call it the Senate."
--------
U.S. Forces Kill Dozens After Iraq Ambushes
2 South Koreans, Colombian, Killed In Separate Attacks
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23170-2003Nov30?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Dec. 1 -- U.S. forces killed 46 Iraqis in fierce fighting Sunday while repulsing a series of ambushes against two U.S. military convoys in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, military officials said early Monday.
After putting down the attacks with tank and cannon fire, U.S. troops discovered that many of the dead and wounded Iraqis were wearing uniforms of Saddam's Fedayeen, a militia loyal to former president Saddam Hussein, according to Master Sgt. Robert Cargie, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division.
The fighting erupted around 1 p.m. Sunday after more than 100 insurgents ambushed the separate U.S. supply convoys, military officials said. The convoys were carrying Iraqi currency into the city as part of a program to replace old bills bearing Hussein's picture with new money.
The guerrillas simultaneously attacked the convoys as they entered the city from different directions, first detonating roadside bombs and then unleashing a barrage of mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons-fire, U.S. military officials said.
In the ensuing fighting, 24 Iraqi guerrillas were killed around one convoy and 22 were killed around the other, a U.S. military official said, adding that the Iraqi death toll would probably rise. The U.S. soldiers also wounded 18 Iraqis and captured eight others, Cargie said.
Seven U.S. soldiers were wounded, and a U.S. civilian in one of the convoys required medical treatment. American military officials said they had no information about any possible Iraqi civilian casualties.
The Iraqi deaths -- the most reported in a single day since President Bush declared the end of major combat in May -- came as other Iraqi fighters were demonstrating an increasing ability to attack foreigners.
On Sunday, two South Korean electrical workers were shot dead and two others were wounded when their convoy was ambushed south of Tikrit, Hussein's home town. The Koreans were contractors involved in developing a power transmission project in Tikrit, South Korean authorities said.
U.S. military officials also announced Sunday that a Colombian civilian working for the U.S. defense contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Hallibuton Co., was killed Saturday when Iraqi fighters opened fire with light weapons as he was traveling 45 miles north of Baghdad near the town of Balad. Two of his colleagues were wounded in the attack, according to Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. Tikrit and Balad are within 40 miles of Samarra and are in a largely Sunni Muslim region where resistance to the U.S. occupation has proved formidable.
In a separate incident in Samarra on Sunday, a convoy of U.S. Army engineers was ambushed by four men firing automatic weapons from a black BMW, Cargie said. U.S. troops returned fire, captured the four attackers and confiscated three Kalashnikov rifles and two rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
U.S. officials also announced that two U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday when their supply convoy was ambushed near the Syrian border. The deaths raised to 104 the number of fatalities among U.S. and allied forces in November, making it the most costly month in terms of soldiers killed since the outbreak of war in March.
"They are clearly targeting coalition members in an effort to intimidate all allies in Iraq and discourage their participation in the reconstruction of Iraq," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the U.S. occupation authority. "They recognize the stakes are high for us, and we realize the stakes are high, too."
The assault on the South Koreans, who were employed by the Seoul-based Ohmoo Electric Co., came one day after seven Spanish intelligence agents were killed south of Baghdad in what witnesses described as a coordinated attack by guerrillas. An eighth Spanish agent, originally feared missing in the attack, accompanied the bodies of his colleagues back to Spain on Sunday.
Also on Saturday, suspected insurgents gunned down two Japanese diplomats along a road near Tikrit.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not expect the surge in attacks to force allied governments to reconsider their policies in Iraq.
"The countries who have forces there recognize that it's a dangerous place and that there are terrorists who are killing people and wounding people, not just coalition forces, but Iraqis in increasing numbers," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him to Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
The attacks on nonmilitary targets appear to be part of an effort by Iraqi guerrillas to broaden their insurgency, which has expanded over the past month beyond the center of resistance in the Sunni Muslim towns west and north of the capital. The insurgents have repeatedly struck in the far north, particularly in the strategic oil city of Mosul, as well as in the predominantly Shiite Muslim south.
Iraqi fighters have also increasingly turned their weapons on fellow Iraqis, such as officials and police officers working with the U.S. occupation authorities. While the number of daily attacks against U.S. and allied soldiers has decreased by about a third since mid-November, U.S. military officials report that violence against Iraqis is up dramatically, with more than 150 incidents over the past month.
"We've said for several weeks this is a clever, adaptive enemy," Kimmitt, the brigadier general, told reporters in Baghdad.
Still, the insurgents have continued to inflict U.S. military casualties, including the two soldiers killed Saturday. Officials said the soldiers, with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, were killed when their convoy came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and small weapons east of Husaybah near the Syrian border. One other soldier was wounded in the incident.
U.S. military officials on Sunday publicly acknowledged for the first time that enemy fire may have caused the Nov. 15 midair collision of two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Seventeen soldiers were killed in the crash, making it the single bloodiest incident for U.S. forces during the Iraq campaign. Officials in Baghdad confirmed they are examining the possibility that one of the helicopters was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. They had previously refrained from speculating on the cause of the crash.
Some witnesses said at the time that at least one of the Black Hawks was struck by ground fire before the collision above a Mosul neighborhood.
Staff writer Bradley Graham in Brussels and correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Informal Peace Plan for Mideast Is Unveiled in Geneva
December 1, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mideast-Geneva-Accord.html?hp
GENEVA (AP) -- Israeli and Palestinian activists launched an unofficial peace treaty aimed at ending one of the world's most intractable conflicts, backed by a gathering of Nobel peace prize winners including former President Jimmy Carter.
Still, strong opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and last-minute dissension within Palestinian ranks underscored the problems facing the plan -- dubbed the ``Geneva accord'' -- that resulted from two years of secret negotiations.
``It is unlikely that we shall ever see a better foundation for peace,'' said Carter, after receiving a standing ovation from a packed Geneva conference hall. ``The people support it. Political leaders are the obstacle to peace.''
Carter criticized the Bush administration, saying it had supported Israel but ignored the well-being of Palestinians. He also criticized Sharon's government for allowing the number of Jewish settlements to skyrocket.
Carter said Israelis had to ask themselves: ``Do we want permanent peace with all our neighbors or do we want to retain our settlements?'' Palestinians also must halt violent attacks on Israelis, he said.
Actor Richard Dreyfuss, master of ceremonies at the event, said that ``peace is far too serious to be left exclusively to governments.''
``People are terrified of the world they seem to be leaving to their children,'' he said. ``(This initiative) is the people's claim to their place at the table.''
The accord proposes borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state close to Israel's borders before the 1967 Mideast war, giving the Palestinians almost all the West Bank and Gaza Strip and part of Jerusalem.
It calls for the removal of most Israeli settlements there and largely sidesteps the so-called ``right of return'' for Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation and their descendants. It also divides sovereignty in Jerusalem.
The negotiators claim their work is in line with the U.S.-backed ``road map'' for peace, which spells out a formula for negotiations but leaves trickier issues unresolved.
In Israel, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz -- who like other current leaders opposes the initiative -- said the road map remained the Israeli government's ``basis for the continuation of talks with the Palestinians.''
Still, the Geneva plan has been welcomed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and leaders of the European Union.
Fifty-eight former presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and other global leaders also released a statement Monday expressing ``strong support'' for the accord.
``The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken far too great a toll already,'' said the leaders -- most of them Western European but joined by former presidents Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, F.W. de Klerk of South Africa and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico.
Work toward the accord began two years ago in an academic discussion at the University of Geneva between former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Professor Alexis Keller. They enlisted then-Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo and began talks, with financial support provided by the Swiss government.
Both Beilin and Abed Rabbo had participated in earlier peace talks, when moderate Ehud Barak was Israel's prime minister. The talks broke down amid violence in early 2001, and Barak was soundly defeated by Sharon in a special election.
``I'm confident this day will mark a new beginning in progress toward historical compromise,'' Abed Rabbo said Monday. ``We've learned from our mistakes. We're building on efforts we made in the past.''
Sharon says the plan is subversive, insisting that only governments may conduct such negotiations. His hard-line administration opposes the far-reaching Israeli concessions that are key parts of the Geneva Accord.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry protested Switzerland's backing of the plan, but the Swiss government maintains it only ``facilitated'' the discussions and had nothing to do with the content.
The agreement debuted Oct. 12 in Amman, Jordan. Since then, negotiators mailed copies of the 50-page accord to every Israeli home and published it in Palestinian newspapers in hopes of winning popular support.
The auditorium for the ceremony featured a large sign declaring, ``There is a plan.'' An olive tree was on the stage.
Some 200 Israelis flew by charter for the ceremony from Tel Aviv, as did 200 Palestinians from Amman, Jordan -- leaving even as both sides at home protested the deal.
Two Palestinian Cabinet ministers and two influential legislators who helped negotiate the plan refused to go Geneva when they were threatened by militants. They changed their minds after they said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat backed their participation, overriding criticism from Fatah hard-liners.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades linked to Fatah called them ``collaborators,'' a loaded term that often marks Palestinians for death. Masked gunmen also shot at the home of Abed Rabbo, who already was in Geneva.
Associated Press correspondent Jonathan Fowler contributed to this report.
On the Net:
http://www.heskem.org.il/Heskem--en.asp
http://www.cartercenter.org/viewdoc.asp?docID1553&submenunews
----
State of fear
Constant terror is eating away at the Israeli soul
Nina Reshef
Monday December 1, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1097372,00.html
It is 7.30pm and my daughter is not home. She is almost 21, working, a responsible young person, sociable and now with spending money in her pocket. So why should I be distressed if she did not call to tell me she would be delayed?
But this is Israel, and my daughter takes a bus home.
My nerves are rattled rather regularly. My daughter barely escaped injury in the March 1996 terror attack at the Dizengoff Centre in Tel Aviv. The immediate consequences were her refusal to approach Dizengoff Centre or ride a bus for six months. When I finally managed to get her to do so, on condition that I accompany her, she became hysterical when she saw a passenger fiddling with a clock. My daughter was 13 at the time.
This tension has continued, with its ups and downs, especially since the outbreak of the current intifada. I have become afraid to turn off the radio: it seems that every time I do so, something terrible has happened.
I am not being melodramatic. I am simply trying to convey a sense of what happens whenever terror becomes part of our lives. It means more than a present full of fear and anxiety, of declining mental and emotional energy. It means, as my daughter aptly stated, a life without a future. It means waiting for your turn to be injured or die.
In our own case, it is the Palestinian terror; in others, it is some fanatical political or religious group. But, whatever the circumstances, terrorism means dehumanisation of the victims, and of the perpetrators. The political stalemate, the failure of leadership and the subsequent moral malaise has affected both Arabs and Israelis in this unhappy region.
The youthful Palestinian suicide bombers have lost the hope and vitality that makes life at their age so marvellous. Israeli youth, I believe, have responded to the terror somewhat similarly: they have become increasing belligerent, especially after a stint of military service in the occupied territories. Their respect for others - not just authority - has declined precipitously; they are restless and demand the immediate gratification that comes from a lacerated sense of time. They, too, have lost hope. As have so many of their parents.
As a 1960s liberal, but more, as a human being, my heart goes out to the Palestinian mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers who have lost relatives to terror, or to the violence of Israeli actions, whether provoked by defensive needs or situations that inspire mindless aggression, or to accidents whose circumstances are contrary to a rational, normal way of life.
The images of these desolated families against a background of the atrocious poverty that marks the Palestinian refugee camps, towns and villages rips at my heart and angers me. This just is not right.
But that does not mean that my family, in our modest middle class comfort on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, suffer less at the sight of buses blasted apart, of shattered bodies and shattered minds, at the funerals we have to attend. We have worked hard; with luck or the grace of God, we are not living in hovels. But this economic comfort does not deny us our humanity nor guarantee insulation from the costs of this war and its outcomes.
At least partially due to the price of the occupation, Israel can no longer afford a humane welfare state. The number of our destitute is rising daily. Treating the victims of terror has drained the human and financial resources of helping institutions. Demoralisation and normative chaos is spreading: just look at how we drive.
The bottom line is that terror is a double-edged sword. It kills spiritually those who wield it just as surely as it kills physically those who are its target. And vice versa. Israelis are paying a dreadful price for this war. That marvellous exercise in national revival, the establishment of the state of Israel, is being threatened by an increasingly corrupt leadership, a shallow culture and a shaky economy, loss of trust in our fellow men and loss of hope in life itself.
The number of our dead and maimed does not equal that of the Palestinians. The price that the Palestinians are paying is appalling; as such, it is easier to photograph because it is so obvious and persistent. But the results of terror in Israel are nonetheless horrific.
Still, as a true liberal who still believes in the fundamental worth of every human being, I cannot weigh the suffering of one people against the suffering of another. Death is death, injustice is injustice, and terror is terror.
· Nina Reshef has lived in Israel for the past 30 years. She is a freelance editor and member of the Taayush organisation, which helps promote Arab-Israeli peaceful relations
----
Quiet Times in the Mideast Encourage Efforts for a Cease-Fire
December 1, 2003
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Monday, Dec. 1 - Israel's security chiefs say that these relatively quiet times for Israelis are deceptive, that Palestinian suicide bombers are merely being foiled.
Still, though no one here likes to tempt fate by pointing it out, almost two months have passed since an Israeli died in a Palestinian suicide bombing.
Further, there are signs that Israel may be relaxing some of its pressure on militants. It has been five weeks since Israel owned up to conducting one of its pinpoint killings of an accused terrorist. [But raids in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers continued. Before dawn on Monday, they carried out house-to-house searches in Ramallah, rounding up dozens of suspected militants, Palestinian security forces and an Israeli military official told Reuters.]
People are still dying on both sides. Late Sunday, a member of Islamic Jihad died in an explosion in his car in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said. They said they suspected Israel, but an Israeli security official said no Israeli forces were in the area.
This is no cease-fire, in other words, but it may prove to the forerunner of one. The Egyptians are preparing to convene the major Palestinian factions this week for talks on a truce.
After three years of conflict and one failed stab at a peace initiative, known as the road map, it is suddenly a time of hints and possibilities here - or, at least, of hints of possibilities. "We, too, believe in the United States that there is a moment of opportunity before us," William J. Burns, the State Department's senior diplomat for Middle Eastern affairs, said Sunday. "We have no illusions. This is obviously a difficult process."
Mr. Burns was in Jerusalem on a visit that appeared to signal new interest by the Bush administration in reviving the road map.
Israeli and Palestinian politicians, business executives and analysts have fanned out once more to European cities, where they have resumed the sorts of unofficial contacts in hotels that were common before the fighting broke out.
Most of those conferences have been discreet. But on Monday in Geneva, prominent Palestinians and Israelis, without the approval of their governments, plan with great fanfare to sign their own, unofficial peace treaty. Organizers are expecting up to 150 representatives from each side, to be presided over by Richard Dreyfuss, the American actor. They say former President Jimmy Carter will also attend.
The document is a detailed, if perhaps wistful, blueprint for resolving all the major disputes. It is also an implicit rebuke to the leadership on both sides, suggesting a failure to explore diplomatic rather than military means.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has denounced the initiative as subversive. The mainstream Fatah movement of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, withheld any official endorsement, prompting four Palestinian politicians to announce Sunday that they would not follow through on their plans to attend the ceremony.
But after Mr. Arafat intervened to urge them to go, three of them said they would do so.
Muhammad Horani, a Fatah legislator who said he would stay here, said he was not backing away from the initiative.
"My decision to stay here doesn't mean we retreated," he said. "On the contrary, we are still committed, and within a few days, you will witness a campaign of signatures of Fatah cadres that will be published in the newspapers."
Yet there are also likely to be demonstrations against the initiative on Monday in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many Palestinians object to it as surrendering a claimed "right of return" to what is now Israel for millions of refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants.
At the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday, a group of youths flung stones at two Palestinian officials who were leaving Gaza for Geneva. No one was injured.
Abdel Raouf Barbakh, a Fatah youth leader in the Rafah refugee camp of southern Gaza, organized the crowd of the young people. "This group of people is discussing compromising on the right of return," he said of the Geneva delegates. "They are doing it without consulting us. They are doing it while Israel continues killing us."
The Geneva initiative comes at a moment of rising Israeli criticism of Mr. Sharon as doing too little to advance negotiations.
It may be a coincidence, but Mr. Sharon has lately signaled interest in having his first meeting with the new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei.
Mr. Qurei delayed the meeting until after the Geneva initiative was signed, in hopes that the publicity would increase pressure on Mr. Sharon, a Palestinian official said.
On Saturday, Mr. Qurei demanded as a condition for the meeting that Israel stop building its new barrier against West Bank Palestinians. Mr. Sharon rejected that demand on Sunday.
The top aides to the two prime ministers met Sunday to prepare for a possible meeting between the two men.
For his part, Mr. Sharon has been threatening the Palestinians with a unilaterally imposed Israeli plan, including the West Bank barrier, if they do not become more conciliatory. His aides have let it be known that he is considering the possibility of evacuating some isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Skeptics argue that Mr. Sharon, with talk of evacuating settlements, is trying to blunt criticism from the left. But a senior Israeli official said Mr. Sharon was trying to build support within his own Likud party and with the public for action on settlements, should peace talks progress. One sign that Mr. Sharon may be trying to bolster Mr. Qurei, whom he has known for years, lies in what the Israelis are not saying: their condemnation of Mr. Arafat, a staple of Israeli public statements, has lately been more muted.
The senior Israeli official said Mr. Sharon wanted to give Mr. Qurei, a canny politician, the chance to deal with Mr. Arafat in his own way. "We told him, `He's your problem,' " the official said.
It may prove significant that, at another unofficial meeting between the sides, a conference in London last week, the Israeli delegation included Mr. Sharon's son Omri, a member of Parliament.
The Palestinian side included Mr. Arafat's top security adviser, Jibril Rajoub.
In the early days of the conflict, before Israel sought to isolate Mr. Arafat, Omri Sharon served as his father's emissary to the Palestinian leader.
"The other side knows that whatever Omri says is as if I said it, and that anything told him is as if it were told me," Mr. Sharon said in 2001.
-------- mideast
Syrian Pressing for Israel Talks
December 1, 2003
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01SYRI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 30 - President Bashar al-Assad called Sunday for the United States to use its influence to revive negotiations between his country and Israel, portraying their absence as a gaping hole in the Bush administration's strategy for the Middle East.
Mr. Assad, in an interview at the small stone villa that serves as his private office in the hills above Damascus, said the details of returning the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for security guarantees to Israel were 80 percent complete a few months before he succeeded his late father as Syria's president. But the Bush administration, preoccupied by Iraq and the Palestinians, has shown little interest in this strand of diplomacy, he said.
The president said neglecting the Syrian-Israel dispute was a prime example of the Bush administration's preaching of visionary change to the Middle East without adopting practical measures to attain it.
"You cannot just keep talking about this vision, you have to put a mechanism in order to achieve that vision," he said.
Mr. Assad, who is 38 and has been in power just half a year longer than President Bush, ranged for more than two hours across subjects from the turmoil in neighboring Iraq to the antiterror campaign to his own hurdles in shaping domestic reform. He insisted that Damascus had already taken many of the actions demanded by the Bush administration in terms of policing its borders and shuttering the offices of militant Palestinian organizations.
Speaking in a mixture of Arabic and fluent English, Mr. Assad struck a generally conciliatory tone toward the United States, emphasizing repeatedly that America's low public standing in the Arab world could be overcome, and that Syria did not regard the United States as an adversary.
Despite bitter differences over Iraq and renewed efforts in Washington to punish Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, Mr. Assad said his intelligence agencies continued to cooperate closely with the C.I.A. in combating terrorism, and had provided information that allowed the United States to foil imminent attacks on Americans in at least seven cases.
He declined to give specific details, saying that doing so might affect future cooperation.
Recent events in the Middle East, like the Israeli attack on what it described as a terrorist training camp in Syria in October, have left the impression that Damascus has little leverage and a shrinking regional role. But Mr. Assad suggested that Syria could be an important component to solving both violent conflicts in the Middle East - in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories.
"There can be no peace in the region without Syria," he said. "And Syria is important for the future stability in Iraq due to its credibility and its being a neighbor to Iraq."
In contrast to Syria's previous belligerent statements about the need for an immediate end to the American occupation of Iraq, however, Mr. Assad softened his country's position. Asked how he felt about having 100,000 American soldiers as his newest neighbors, he sounded almost resigned.
"The problem is not whether you have one American soldier or a million American soldiers on your borders," he said. "And the problem is not whether they are going to stay one year or 10 years. The problem is whether the U.S. is going to become a power for achieving turbulence in the region instead of being an element of stability."
Mr. Assad acknowledged that it was up to the Iraqis to decide on the opportune moment for the United States to withdraw, but said democracy could not be achieved at gunpoint. "I think the solution in Iraq is to allow the Iraqis to write their own constitution and to elect their own government," he said.
In those remarks, the Syrian president joined the unusual chorus of Arab leaders calling for measures in Iraq that often do not exist in their own countries. Although there is an official political opposition here, it is largely toothless. The Baath Party and various police agencies run the country, with rigorous controls against dissent, and much of the economy is state controlled.
Mr. Assad ruled out the deployment of Syrian troops as part of any peacekeeping force in Iraq, saying that given decades of friction between the countries, a Syrian contingent would probably be unacceptable to the Iraqis.
The American invasion at first seemed to give Syria a case of the jitters. On the day that the United States Army brought the statue of Saddam Hussein crashing down in Baghdad, Syrian television broadcast a long documentary about Islamic architecture. On the streets of Damascus at the time, Syrians could be heard whispering jokes about knocking over their own statues, or at least winning greater freedom.
Mr. Assad conceded that some of his fellow citizens might have considered the upheaval in Iraq contagious, but said any idea of Iraq as a model for change was fading beneath the grim reality of daily violence.
"I think before the war on Iraq, some thought about this," he said. "Most of them now think this is a bad example of bringing democracy."
Syria took one of the most strident Arab positions against the United States-led invasion of Iraq, with Mr. Assad saying at the time that he hoped it would fail and that Iraqi resistance would prove effective against the Americans.
In the interview, Mr. Assad said much of what Syria had warned about had come to pass in Iraq, but he acknowledged that both his country and the Arab world at large were stuck in a dilemma. They loathe the idea that the United States military can overturn an Arab government, but fear failure might inspire a tidal wave of Islamic militancy or other violence.
"It's like entering a long tunnel: there is no light at the end and it's growing narrower and narrower - at the end you're going to be stuck," the president said. "You cannot go forward, and you cannot go backward."
Mr. Assad said Syria was no longer permitting anti-American volunteers to pass at official border crossings, but he said he was powerless to control infiltrations across the 300-mile border. He dismissed the idea that foreign fighters were an important element in the resistance.
"Maybe you have 1,000 or 2,000 people from outside Iraq, but what about the 25 million Iraqis?" he said.
In discussing possible renewed Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, Mr. Assad said he had no preconditions. But given the progress made before they foundered in March 2000 over the issue of borders, it would be a waste of time to start from scratch, he said.
If such talks did succeed, the president said he saw no reason that Syria could not have full, normal relations with Israel.
"This word has no limit: normalization means like the relations between Syria and the United States," he said.
The Syrian leader went through the laundry list of accusations that Washington has leveled against his country, all recently packaged together in the Syrian Accountability Act passed by Congress this fall and expected to be signed by Mr. Bush.
The law calls for a variety of sanctions to be imposed on Syria. Mr. Assad denied sponsoring terrorist organizations or helping to arm Mr. Hussein, noting the longstanding hostility between the two countries. Syrian support for the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, which the United States calls a terrorist group, consists of political support for its confrontation with Israel but neither arms nor money, he said.
He called the legislation typical of the way Israel's allies in Washington foment obstacles to any improvement in ties with Syria.
On domestic issues, the president conceded that the reform program he outlined in his inaugural speech in July 2000 was moving slowly. He painted the main obstacle as the mentality in Syria, especially in the government, toward change.
He denied the existence of an old guard that was either holding him hostage to his father's policies or preventing him from carrying out the reforms he seeks.
"I have the authority to take the steps that I am convinced of," he said.
A common complaint among Syria's businessmen is that either relatives of the president or the children of close associates of his father, Hafez al-Assad, control vast business empires and block any economic reform that might dilute their control. Mr. Assad said his relatives competed for business just as any other Syrians here do.
There had been a fairly robust free speech movement in most Syrian cities in the year after his inauguration, but a series of arrests and trials of prominent critics of the government squelched the feeling of a political spring. Mr. Assad said those jailed had sought to inflame sectarian divisions, and he rejected the notion that Syrians felt any constraints in criticizing his government.
"If we put in prison anyone who criticizes us, I don't think we would have enough prisons," he said.
-------- nato
Rumsfeld Presses NATO Allies on Iraq
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rumsfeld-Europe.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told NATO allies on Monday that the United States would welcome more help in Iraq. Other U.S. officials said some European defense ministers suggested that NATO might assume command of a multinational division now led by Poland.
After meetings with his counterparts in the alliance, Rumsfeld described the situation in Iraq as a contradiction: deadly violence daily against U.S. and coalition forces even as they make important moves toward restoring normalcy and establishing democracy.
``There are a limited number of people who are determined to kill innocent men, women and children who are connected to the coalition or who are coalition participants or who are innocent Iraqis,'' Rumsfeld said.
Nonetheless, he said progress is being made in rounding up those responsible for the violence. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who appeared with Rumsfeld at a news conference at NATO headquarters and had visited Iraq last week, said the insurgents ``are afraid their way of thuggery'' is losing.
Lord Robertson, presiding over his final NATO ministerial meetings this week before retiring as the alliance's top diplomat, said in remarks opening Monday's session that America's allies ``must have the political will to deploy and use (their) forces in much larger numbers than at present.'' He mentioned not only Afghanistan and Iraq but the broader war against terror.
Robertson also said the time was approaching for NATO to end its peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, eight years after it began. The allies agreed to reduce the number of peacekeepers there from 12,500 to 7,000 next year, with the intention of handing the entire operation to the European Union.
Rumsfeld said it was ``open to discussion'' what role the United States might play in Bosnia with the Europeans in charge.
In a sign of tangible progress toward transforming NATO from an organization geared toward Cold War-era conflicts to one capable to defending its member countries from 21st century threats, Robertson announced formation of a multinational battalion of soldiers, based in the Czech Republic, that could respond to a military crisis involving the use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.
The battalion comprises about 500 soldiers from 13 NATO countries, the first of its kind. It will be presented officially Wednesday at its Czech headquarters.
``This is a new and innovative capability aiming to deal with a threat that exists and a threat that we have to cope with,'' Robertson told reporters as Belgian soldiers displayed protective masks and suits, decontamination gear and laboratory tools that the battalion would send into the field to detect and analyze harmful agents and, if necessary, help contaminated victims.
Rumsfeld said that while he encouraged the allies to take a bigger role in Iraq, whether to do so was their decision. Eighteen of 26 NATO nations -- include the seven due to become full members next spring -- already have troops in Iraq, he said.
Robertson said the NATO defense ministers decided ``in principle'' to expand their work in Afghanistan beyond Kabul, the capital, where a NATO security force has been keeping the peace. NATO intends to set up as many as five ``provincial reconstruction teams'' around Afghanistan, like units already run by U.S. forces. On Monday U.S. and Afghan officials inaugurated one such military-civilian team to carry out relief projects in Herat, a city in far western Afghanistan.
Eventually, Rumsfeld said, NATO could go a step further and ``take over military operations'' in Afghanistan. Currently the United States has about 10,000 troops there to assist in the country's reconstruction and to hunt down remnants of the former ruling Taliban militia and al-Qaida network fighters.
Dominique Struye de Swielande, the Belgian defense minister, told reporters his government was willing to consider carefully the idea of NATO assuming command in Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld had said Sunday that while the United States favors having NATO take over in Afghanistan, the Bush administration was not ready to propose that officially.
He said the administration also would welcome a bigger NATO role in Iraq. Currently the alliance is supporting Poland's work as leader of the multinational division operating in south-central Iraq.
Robertson seemed to hint that more could be done soon, perhaps in the new year.
On the Net:
NATO: http://www.nato.int/home.htm
--------
NATO Struggles to Boost Afghan Forces
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Defense.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- NATO defense ministers struggled Monday to plug gaps in their peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, after warnings that a failure there could return the country to chaos and destroy the alliance's credibility.
``Governments must have the political will to deploy and to use (their) forces in much larger numbers than at present,'' said NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson.
``We must stay the course in Afghanistan. ... If we don't, Afghanistan and its problems will appear on all of our doorsteps,'' Robertson told the meeting.
Despite the problems mustering troops for Afghanistan, Robertson and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed optimism the allies would come through.
``My estimate is that within a reasonable period of time, (Robertson) will be able to encourage, persuade ... NATO nations to provide the forces necessary,'' Rumsfeld told a news conference.
Robertson also suggested NATO may begin talks next year on a wider alliance role in Iraq, perhaps taking charge of the central zone currently managed by Polish troops.
Robertson is demanding that ministers offer 14 helicopters and about 400 specialist troops to the NATO force of 5,700 in Kabul.
He also wants them to muster extra forces so the alliance can keep its pledge to the United Nations to expand the operation, first to the northern city of Kunduz, then gradually to more provincial cities. Officials said up to 17 cities could be included in the plans.
Robertson has warned that a failure of the mission could ``shatter'' NATO's credibility and see the country again becoming a base for international terrorism.
Although Norway, Iceland, Spain and others offered some personnel, nations were reluctant to provide the much-needed helicopters.
Greece said all its aircraft were needed to protect next year's Olympics, France insisted it was thinly stretched with commitments in Africa, and Belgium said its helicopters could not safely operate in Afghanistan for ``technical reasons.''
The ministers also agreed to cut NATO's peacekeeping force in Bosnia by almost half to 7,000, preparing the way for a likely end to that mission in late 2004.
The troop reduction is expected to be quickly followed by NATO ending the mission it launched in 1995, handing control to a European Union force of soldiers and police.
The two-day meeting that began Monday gave European allies a chance to discuss with Rumsfeld a plan agreed to last weekend to boost the EU's ability to mount its own military operations.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck sought to allay U.S. concerns that the plans could weaken the Atlantic alliance.
``The goal is to strengthen the European pillar of NATO, which is also in the interests of the United States,'' he said. ``This is not at all in competition with NATO.''
The latest EU plan modifies a French-German proposal to give the bloc its own headquarters, which Washington saw as a threat to NATO unity and waste of resources. Backed by Britain, the new plan would set up an EU planning cell at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium and add staff to an existing European strategic planning unit in Brussels.
Rumsfeld's first reaction was cautious. ``I'm confident and hopeful that things will sort through in a way that we end up with an arrangement that is not duplicative or competitive'' with NATO, he said.
In the longer term, Rumsfeld suggested the alliance could further expand its operation in Afghanistan, perhaps eventually taking over the entire military mission. Currently, a U.S.-dominated combat force of 10,000 operates apart from the NATO mission there, fighting remnants of the Taliban regime and their al-Qaida allies.
Diplomats said Spain had floated the idea that NATO take charge of the peacekeeping operation in central Iraq. Spain is scheduled to replace Poland as the lead nation in that sector next year and would like NATO to follow on. Officials said the United States backed the Spanish idea. Robertson said a formal discussion of such a move was expected in 2004.
Although several NATO nations have sent troops to Iraq, the alliance has limited its role to providing logistical support to the Polish-led force -- partly because France and Germany have opposed a wider role.
The ministers declared operational NATO's first nuclear, biological and chemical defense battalion, comprising about 500 specialist troops.
NATO foreign ministers will hold their year-end meeting Thursday and Friday.
-------- russia
Oil cartel and Russia on the verge of a cold war
By Robert Koch
Monday, December 01, 2003
AFP
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/dec/01/yehey/opinion/20031201opi6.html
With Russia now exporting more oil than Saudi Arabia, the scene is set for a cold war between Moscow and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec), industry experts say.
The Russians are refusing to go along with opec demands for a concerted drop in production, posing looming problems for the cartel as opec oil ministers prepare to meet here on Thursday.
Russia does not belong to the organization but has become a prime mover on world petroleum markets, and there is not much opec can do about it.
"The sharp rise in Russian oil exports this year-which will continue next year-once again raises the question: 'Is opec doomed?'" said Leo Drollas of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.
Russia is pumping some 8.6 million barrels of oil a day, compared to 7.96 million for Saudi Arabia.
This, Drollas said, was "changing the power structure of the industry."
Opec wants all oil-producing countries, whether or not they are members of the cartel, to reduce output in order to make way for exports by Iraq, which is expected to be producing 3.5 million barrels a day within five years.
Without a reduction in the offer, the addition of Iraqi exports will create a glut on the market, making it difficult for opec to maintain the 25 dollars (21 euros) per barrel, which it sees as the "fair price" for long-term market stability.
But the fact that benchmark Brent crude oil stands around 29 dollars a barrel because of what opec calls temporary speculative pressures, gives Russia no incentive to curb its output. In fact, it is likely to increase production to 9.2 million barrels a day next year, according to Francis Perrin of the magazine Petrole et Gaz in Paris.
"Russia has no interest in collaborating with opec," Drollas said. "It's better off fighting another cold war with it."
"It's the so called free-rider syndrome," he added. "While Russia refuses to cut production, opec has to do it if it wants to sustain prices, so Russia gets a free ride on production levels and high prices without giving anything back to opec."
Frederic Lasserre, an oil industry analyst with Societe Generale, said opec is caught in a vicious circle.
"To maintain a price of 25 dollars means it would have to reduce its offer," he said. "The shortage thus created would be compensated by an increase in production by the non- opec countries, notably Russia, Mexico and Norway, which would cause the cartel to lose market share."
Opec has about 38 percent of the world market today, down from 41 percent in 1998, and this is likely to fall still further to 36 percent next year, according to an estimate in The Economist.
However, Lasserre said "the capacity of opec to fix prices is more real than this fall in its market share would suggest."
"Among the principal members of the cartel, it is the state which decides how much to produce and export, while the privatized Russian petroleum industry does not necessarily see a 'national interest'" as it takes on the competition, he said.
Perrin said this was the reason why Russia "is in no hurry to heed opec's siren call."
Nevertheless, he added, the real logic in the oil industry is concerned with reserves, rather than with current production and prices.
"Some members of the cartel consider the reserves of the non- opec countries will be exhausted by 2050," he said.
"Considering the significant increase in world demand, the organization, which has 66 percent of the known reserves in the world, including 20 percent in Saudi Arabia, has no interest in triggering a price war with Russia, which has only 6 percent of known reserves."
Farouk Ibrahim, head of communications at opec headquarters here, said nobody has an interest in a fall in prices.
"Without a fair price, investors will not invest and find new reserves. Our Russian friends have understood this perfectly," he said.
-------- space
NASA misses the mark
By Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican,
chairman of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee.
December 01, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031130-111249-5210r.htm
As a member of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics for 15 years, I have witnessed time and again NASA's over-promising, over-marketing and underestimating costs. Whether it's the Space Shuttle or Space Station, it's a pattern. NASA goes for the grandiose, ignoring doable, more affordable alternatives. An Industrial Space Facility, reliant on remote-control robotics and infrequent visits by astronauts, was an alternative for a permanently manned station. This could have been done for a small fraction of the cost of the International Space Station, and we would have almost immediately benefited from space-based science experiments.
America is now at a vital crossroads, struggling with choices, but with no quality vision on which to base those decisions. This mandate for decision has been forced upon us in large measure by the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia. With the current grounding of the Shuttle fleet, America has lost the capability for manned space flight. We simply can't go on without the consensus of a unifying vision. Great treasure and lives are being expended; the nation must appreciate the great purpose of sending humans into space, or we will cease to do it. NASA has squandered money and lives insisting on mega-projects, and it has jeopardized its greatest asset: the faith of the American people.
Yet, America's continuous support for a national space program is testimony to our people's national character, which is tied in so many ways to the conquest of frontiers: the expansion of freedom, hope and prosperity for the common man.
Even now, as despair is evident in our public-sector space program, the commercially-focused space sector is confident and gearing up. Telecommunication and space services (like weather and space imaging and those relating to our Global Positioning System) have already changed our world. Now, space entrepreneurs are emerging to inspire us with their innovation and creativity and their willingness to take the next step up.
Individuals like Burt Rutan, Dennis Tito and Elon Musk are pushing the boundaries, building affordable space hardware and investing where no investor has gone before.They are also changing the rules when it comes to the economics of space travel.If not dragged down by our own space bureaucracy, the new space entrepreneurs will no doubt make major advances toward affordable access to space. Their goals are not so grandiose: taking tourists into space and bringing them home alive. These private-sector endeavors will spawn spinoff technologies that will help our government efforts, especially in defense. There's a role reversal for you.
And spinoffs notwithstanding, we may also see a foundation laid for ultra-rapid passenger and package delivery service to many points on the globe,aswellasspace tourism and other moneymaking ventures.All this is happening, let us note, when the NASA effort is thrashing around, as its huge programs collapse from their own contradictions.
So, what must be done? Let's get government out of the way of space entrepreneurs and put in place policies that encourage such private-sector space initiatives. Congress should provide incentives for space investment.MyZero Gravity/Zero Tax proposal should be dusted off and implemented.NASA should agree to use private-sector alternatives in resupplying the Space Station.Government, of course, has more than a passive role to play.Like it or not, the space effort is by its nature tethered to the government.In the short term, we need to finish the work at hand, and that means getting the Space Station's laboratory working and showing results.Anything else will result in a huge loss of credibility with the American taxpayers and make them ever more skeptical about NASA.
The Clementine mission, brought about by a group of rebels in the space community, discovered evidence of water at lunar poles in 1996.The Lunar Prospector project demonstrated that commercial lunar exploration missions are feasible. With evidence of water on the moon, we can make oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel. The Moon/Earth arena beckons us.Helium-3, a rare isotope found on Earth, is in abundant supply on the Moon.Some believe that this element may in the future provide the basis for a clean-burning fuel if and when fusion reactor technology becomes a reality.
So, let's quit talking about sending a person to Mars, and look a little closer at what we can do with water on the moon. Let us focus on this vast stretch of the near universe, and make sure we can use it to better the lives of our people and make them safer and more prosperous.
On another front, while we remain mired in indecision and bureaucracy concerning what direction U.S. human space flight should take, the Chinese seem to have a clear understanding of why they are attempting human space flight: to enhance national prestige, technological advances and the promotion of high-tech exports. The success of China'sfirstastronaut launched into orbit in October could signal a fast-track space program that could very well leave us in the dust.
Obviously, America has to get going. The president needs to lead the way with a major vision speech, and what day would be more perfect than December 17 - the 100th anniversary of human flight?He could, if he chooses, talk about encouraging Orville and Wilbur Wright-like projects with incentives like the Zero Gravity/Zero Tax proposal. With such empowerment, mind-boggling projects like the collection of solar power from arrays of solar panels hold the promise of an abundant energy source for humankind. Our president has the opportunity to excite a whole new generation about space. I implore him to do so. He has been a great leader since September 11. Now, he can make a historic mark on another great defining quest for our nation.
----
Satellite to launch; curiosity soars
12/1/03
By NORA K. WALLACE
SANTA BARBARA (CA) NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
http://news.newspress.com/topsports/120103launch.htm?now=43251&tref=1
A top-secret national security satellite -- estimated to be worth several billion dollars -- will be lofted into orbit early Tuesday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The final Atlas 2AS to fly from Vandenberg is set to lift off sometime between 1 and 5 a.m. Tuesday, carrying a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The NRO -- once a clandestine organization -- does not release any information about the satellites it launches and operates, including mission, weight or cost. The agency and the military don't even release the actual launch time until shortly before liftoff.
"I can only say those two words, 'national security,' " said Fran Slimmer, spokeswoman for International Launch Services.
Tuesday's launch has been delayed about a half-dozen times over the past year for various spacecraft and payload issues.
Two previous Lockheed Martin Atlas 2AS launches flew from Vandenberg. A December 1999 launch carried NASA's $1.5 billion Terra spacecraft and a September 2001 Atlas 2AS carried another satellite for the NRO.
While the military and the government refuse to give details of the launch, space enthusiasts around the world work to uncover such information. Sky watchers track every detail of the launch to determine the cargo, including checking trajectories and orbits, and charting the flight path of the rocket.
The 2001 satellite, according to space enthusiasts, was likely a Navy ocean surveillance satellite, possibly a new generation of the Naval Ocean Surveillance System, or NOSS. Those payloads generally consist of three satellites used to identify the location of ships.
Ted Molczan, a satellite tracker from Toronto, said the public information about Tuesday's launch is identical to the 2001 Atlas launch, which carried two NOSS satellites. Because of that, he believes Tuesday's launch is the same system. The main mystery, he said, is whether there are two or three satellites aboard the rocket.
All the NOSS-type satellites launched between 1971 and 1996 carried three satellites.
"They are believed to detect radio transmissions from ships at sea," Mr. Molczan said. "This enables the U.S. government to locate and track the movements of foreign vessels of interest, for military and/or intelligence purposes."
The 159-foot-tall Lockheed Martin rocket will soon be replaced by the company's Atlas 5, a new breed of rocket. It should launch sometime in 2005 from Vandenberg, Ms. Slimmer said. The Atlas launch pad, Space Launch Complex 3-East, will be refurbished for the bigger rocket.
As this is the last West Coast Atlas 2AS launch, the NRO will launch future payloads aboard Boeing Delta 4 rockets, a new type of rocket slated for Space Launch Complex-6 next year.
Jalama Beach County Park will be closed from 5 p.m. today to 6 a.m. Tuesday for launch-related safety reasons.
----
NASA Works on Radiation Protection Shield
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Cosmic-Radiation.html
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- Researchers in Huntsville say they may have found a better shield to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation and use as the structural skin and walls of spaceships, planet outposts and space stations.
``What we are doing here with the radiation study program will affect all other long-term NASA space exploration missions,'' said Ed Semmes, NASA radiation study program manager at the National Space Science and Technology Center. The NSSTC and Marshall Space Flight Center are working together on the project.
``Going anywhere in the solar system or universe will depend on protecting crews from radiation,'' said Semmes. ``Lunar exploration, which may be in the near future, and if we chose to go to Mars in the future, will be dependent on this research.''
Semmes said Huntsville researchers are developing a better radiation model that would show NASA the risks of space radiation and how to combat them. He estimates researchers should have answers by 2008.
The shield, composed of several sheets of polyethylene heavily impregnated with hydrogen, is called a material composite, said Raj Kaul, an NSSTC materials scientist. The hydrogen breaks down, or diffuses, harmful radiation that could cause cancer by reducing heavy ions into lighter ones.
Exposure to lighter ions is less harmful to people than cosmic radiation, said Nasser Barghouty, also a materials scientist.
``We have the data today for space shuttle and space station,'' said Barghouty. ``Much of what we do is an uncertain element. The question is, how do we minimize that?''
NASA and the Russian Space Agency have been sending probes to Mars for 40 years. Scientists know the radiation counts in space and on Mars' surface, but they don't know how long-term exposure would affect a space traveler, Barghouty said.
The Huntsville-developed material is strong and flexible enough to be used to build a spaceship or a space station module, Kaul said.
``We are trying to develop a material that is multifunctional,'' Kaul said. ``If we make a spacecraft out of it, then it is not only a structural material, but it also protects the astronauts from radiation, too. This material accomplishes those goals.''
Kaul said the material also acts as a shield for micrometeroids, high-speed small particles that sometimes strike a spacecraft and cause damage.
``It gives us many types of protection all in one package,'' Semmes said.
Initial tests prove the shield protects humans from radiation, but scientists will need more information, Semmes said. The materials will be tested extensively over the next few years in Huntsville and at Brookhaven Lab, on Long Island, N.Y.
``We hope that this will be the shield that gets our crews to Mars and beyond,'' Semmes said. ``In a few years, the work done here in Huntsville might be part of every spacecraft.''
-------- spies
N. Korea Accuses U.S. of 150 Spy Flights
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-US-Spy-Flights.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Monday the U.S. military conducted at least 150 spy flights against it in November and accused Washington of ``watching for an opportunity to crush'' the communist regime.
Citing ``military sources,'' the North's official KCNA news agency said reconnaissance planes such as the U-2, RC-12 and RF-4C had intruded into its airspace. The report questioned Washington's commitment to seeking a peaceful resolution to a standoff over the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons.
``Those acts clearly prove that the U.S. imperialist war hawks are watching for an opportunity to crush the DPRK with arms, clinging to their anachronistic hostile policy toward it as usual, though they are loudmouthed about 'a solution to an issue' through negotiations,'' KCNA said.
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
North Korea regularly makes such accusations. The U.S. military does not comment on North Korean claims about spy flights, although it acknowledges monitoring North Korean military activity.
Efforts are under way to reopen nuclear talks involving the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas. A first round ended in August with little progress.
Washington keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against the North, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
-------- us
In Rumsfeld's Shop
A senior Air Force officer watches as the neocons consolidate their Pentagon coup.
By Karen Kwiatkowski
December 1, 2003
American Conservative
http://amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon. Below is the first of three installments describing her experience there. They provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch-for the first time in its history-a "preventive" war.
In early May 2002, I was looking forward to retirement from the United States Air Force in about a year. I had a cushy job in the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, International Security Affairs, Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the previous two years, I had published two books on African security issues and had passed my comprehensive doctoral exams at Catholic University. I was very pleased with the administration's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sub-Saharan Africa, former Marine and Senator Helms staffer Michael Westphal, and was ready to start thinking about my dissertation and my life after the military.
When Mike called me in to his office, I thought I was getting a new project or perhaps that one of my many suggestions of fun things to do with Africa policy had been accepted. But the look on his face clued me in that this was going to be one of those meetings where somebody wasn't leaving happy. After a quick rank check, I had a good idea which one it would be.
There was a position in Near East South Asia (NESA) that they needed to fill right away. I wasn't interested. They phrased the question another way: "We have been tasked to send a body over to Bill Luti. Can we send you?" I resisted-until I slowly guessed that in true bureaucratic fashion and can-do military tradition my name had already been sent over. This little soirée in Mike's office was my farewell.
I went back to my office and e-mailed a buddy in the Joint Staff. Bob wrote back, "Write down everything you see." I didn't do it, but these most wise words from a trusted friend proved the first of three omens I would soon receive.
I showed up down the hall a few days later. It looked just like the office from which I came, newer blue cubicles, narrow hallways piled high with copy paper, newspapers, unused equipment, and precariously leaning map rolls. The same old concrete-building smell pervaded, maybe a little mustier. I was taking over the desk of a CIA loaner officer. Joe had been called back early to the agency and was hoping to go to Yemen. Before he left, he briefed me on his biggest project: ongoing negotiations with the Qatari sheiks over who was paying for improvements to Al Udeid Air Base. I was familiar with Al Udeid from my time on the Air Staff a few years before. Back then we seemed to like the Saudis, and our Saudi bases were a few hours closer to the action than Al Udeid, so the U.S. played a woo-me game. Now that we needed and wanted Al Udeid to be finished quickly and done up right, it was time for the emirs to play hard to get. Joe gave me the rundown on counterterrorism ops in Yemen and an upcoming agreement with the Bahraini monarch to extend our military-security agreement, locking in a relationship just in case those Bahraini experiments with democracy actually took off.
I had an obligatory meeting with the deputy director, Paul Hulley, Navy Captain. This meeting followed a phone call in which I hadn't been as compliant as I should have been with a Navy Captain, and since Paul had handled my bad attitude with candor and grace, I was determined to like him-and I did. I gave him my story: I was a year from retirement and, more importantly, I was in a car pool. I'd be working a 7:15 to 17:30 schedule. He was neither charmed nor impressed. He advised that I'd need to be working a lot longer than that. Then we stepped in to meet Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Luti. I knew Luti had a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts and was a recently retired Navy Captain himself. At this point, I didn't know what a neocon was or that they had already swarmed over the Pentagon, populating various hives of policy and planning like African hybrids, with the same kind of sting reflex. Luti just seemed happy to have me there as a warm body.
My second omen was the super-size bottles of Tums and Tylenol Joe left in his desk. The third occurred as I was chatting with my new office mate, a career civil servant working the Egypt desk. As the conversation moved into Middle East news and politics, she mentioned that if I wanted to be successful here, I shouldn't say anything positive about the Palestinians. In 19 years of military service, I had never heard such a politically laden warning on such an obscure topic to such an inconsequential player. I had the sense of a single click, the sound tectonic plates might make as they shift deep under the earth and lock into a new resting position-or when the trigger is pulled in a game of Russian roulette.
I had never worked for neocons before, and the philosophical journey to understand what they stood for was not a trip I wanted to take. But my conversations with coworkers and some of the people I was meeting in the office opened my eyes to something strange and fascinating. Those who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite knew that something calculated had happened to NESA. Key personnel, long-time civilian professionals holding the important billets, had been replaced early in the transition. The Office Director, second in command and normally a professional civilian regional expert, was vacant. Joe McMillan had been moved to the NESA Center over at National Defense University. This was strange because in a transition the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies. To remove that continuity factor seemed contraindicated, but at the time, I didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was being brought in from a variety of outside think tanks.
Another civilian replacement about which I was told was that of the long-time Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk, Larry Hanauer. Word was that he was even-handed with Israel, there had been complaints from one of his countries, and as a gesture of good will, David Schenker, fresh from the Washington Institute, was serving as the new Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk.
I came to share with many NESA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon. There was a sense that politics like these might play better at the State Department or the National Security Council, not the Pentagon, where we considered ourselves objective and hard boiled.
The anti-Arab orientation I perceived was only partially confirmed by things I saw. Towards the end of the summer, we welcomed to the office as a temporary special assistant to Bill Luti an Egyptian-American naval officer, Lt. (later Lt. Cmdr.) Youssef Aboul-Enein. His job wasn't entirely clear to me, but he would research bits of data in which Bill Luti was interested and peruse Arabic-language media for quotations or events that could be used to demonize Saddam Hussein or link him to nastiness beyond his own borders and with unsavory characters.
While I was still hoping to be sent back to the Africa desk, I was also angling to take the NESA North Africa desk that would be vacated in July. During this time, May through mid-July, the news in the daily briefing was focused on war planning for the Iraq invasion. Slides from a CENTCOM brief appeared on the front page of the New York Times on July 5. A few weeks later, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered an investigation into who leaked this information. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation was tasked to work with the FBI, and everyone in NESA was supposed to be interviewed.
My interview, by two fresh-faced OSI investigators, occurred sometime in July. One handed me a copy of an article by William Arkin discussing Iraq-war planning published in May 2002 in the Los Angeles Times and asked if I knew Arkin. I didn't recall the name, but when I checked I learned that he had spent time at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Apparently, Arkin had facilitated a leak six weeks before, but it hadn't caused a fuss. I pointed out that I did know a person with major SAIS links who probably knew Arkin. They leaned forward eagerly. "Have you ever heard of Paul Wolfowitz?" They looked puzzled, so I called up the bio of the deputy secretary and showed them how he ran SAIS during most of the Clinton years. I suggested the investigation look at the answers to the cui bono question. I also told them no one in the military or at CENTCOM would leak war plans because as Rumsfeld accurately said, it gets people killed. But the politicos who were anxious to get the American people over the mental hump that the Bush administration was going to send troops to Iraq were not military and had both motive and opportunity to leak.
During the summer, I assumed the duties of the North Africa desk. Part of my job was to schedule and complete two overdue bilateral meetings with longtime U.S. security partners Morocco and Tunisia. Bilateral meetings historically included a tailored regional-security briefing addressing Weapons of Mass Destruction threats and status. In planning my upcoming bilateral agendas and attendee lists, I discovered that Bill Luti had certain issues regarding the regional-security briefing, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism.
There had been an incident shortly before I arrived in which the Defense Intelligence Officer had been prohibited from giving his briefing to a particular country only hours before he was scheduled. During the summer, the brief was simply not scheduled for another important bilateral meeting. Instead, a briefing was prepared by another policy office that worked on non-proliferation issues. This briefing was not a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency or CIA but instead came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an "expanded Iraq desk." It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents.
About that same time, my education on the history and generation of the neoconservative movement had completed its first stage. I now understood that neoconservatism was both unhistorical and based on the organizing construct of "permanent revolution." I had studied the role played by hawkish former Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) and the neoconservative drift of formerly traditional magazines like National Review and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. I had observed that many of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon not only had limited military experience, if any at all, but they also advocated theories of war that struck me as rejections of classical liberalism, natural law, and constitutional strictures. More than that, the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the "Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States" agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact.
By August, I was morally and intellectually frustrated by my powerlessness against what increasingly appeared to be a philosophical hijacking of the Pentagon. Indeed, I had sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but perhaps we were never really expected to take it all that seriously ...
To be continued
In a coming installment, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowsi relates what happens when a group of Israeli generals treads the well-worn (for them) path to Douglas Feith's office.
-------- propaganda wars
CROCODILE TEARDROPS
Bush sheds a tear for the troops - but what about those two Iraqi girls they may have killed?
December 1, 2003
by Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j120103.html
It was the most publicized teardrop in modern history. As the Washington Times, in a veritable swoon, breathlessly related:
"President Bush yesterday swooped into Baghdad for a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit with U.S. troops and, with a tear running down his cheek, said their countrymen 'pray for your safety and your strength as you continue to defend America.'"
"As he surveyed the crowd," reported the Associated Press, "a tear dripped down the president's cheek."
"A tear could be seen rolling down the president's cheek as the troops roared and pushed forward," a Houston television station observed.
"Entering the hall, a tear visible in his eye, was 'an emotional moment,' Bush said afterward," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Tears of empathy from the compassionate conservative, or tears of frustration on account of how badly the war is going? In any case, they certainly weren't tears of remorse:
"We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive."
In his recent speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, the President proclaimed his "forward strategy" - and he means it, I believe, in a military sense. Iraq is merely a way station on the road to complete domination of the region. We're on the Middle East escalator and who knows where the next stop is - Iran? Syria? Saudi Arabia? Bush realizes that, by playing a purely defensive game in Iraq, the US cannot hope to win any time soon - and, in any case, the political price may be so high that an American "victory" would be strictly Pyrrhic. All the insurgents have to do is hold on, and wait for the Americans to tire of the burden of empire.
But if we look at the occupation of Iraq as merely the first stage in a larger strategy to clean out the Augean Stables of the Middle East - "draining the swamp," as the neocons say - then the stationing of so many American troops in Iraq begins to make a certain amount of sense. After all, these troops are not trained as police, as humanitarian aid workers, or even in counterinsurgency tactics: their job is to confront and defeat enemy armies, that is, the armed forces of other states. So why the tremendous resistance on the part of this normally opportunistic administration to handing over a festering problem - one with ominous domestic political implications - to the United Nations? Listen carefully:
"... we will stay on the offensive."
What does the President mean by this? Is he saying that future wars are on the drawing board? This, of course, is the sort of question that the political opposition - in a real democracy - is bound to ask. But not in America, where the fake "opposition" tries to outdo the administration in the militarism department. To anyone with illusions about how, if only the Republicans hadn't "stolen" the Florida election with the complicity of the Supreme Court, we wouldn't be in Iraq today, I implore you to pay attention. Listen to what Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York), said on her own trip to Iraq. She echoed the President's own words: the headlines read "Clinton says: 'Stay the course.'" She added that she didn't think we have "adequate forces" in the region: "We have to exert all of our efforts militarily, but the outcome is not assured." She said she was "moved and inspired" by what she saw in Iraq, but qualified her endorsement by adding:
"The administration didn't fully appreciate what they would be encountering in Iraq, [although many members of the Bush administration had been preoccupied for years with Saddam Hussein.] Now we're playing catch-up."
During the course of two Thanksgiving dinners with the troops in occupied Iraq, the soldiers wanted to know "how the people at home feel about what we are doing." The leader of what is perceived as the far left wing of the Democratic party replied:
"Americans are wholeheartedly proud of what you are doing, but there are many questions at home about the (Bush) administration's policies."
Is Hillary "It's for the children" Clinton proud of this:
"American troops at Ibn Firnas airport, seven kilometers from Baqubah, shot Fatimam and Azra, 15 and 12, on Thursday at midday as they were collecting wood from a field some 30 meters away, their brother said. 'Azra died on the spot and my other sister later died from her wounds,' said 18-year-old Qusay.
"Policeman Hussein Ali said U.S. forces handed one of the girls' bodies over to the police 'arguing that she had a gun in her possession.' Police searched the girls' home, 'without finding anything illegal,' Ali added."
Americans are proud of the bravery, the endurance, and the professionalism of American soldiers, but these personal virtues are entirely separate from - and, often, in opposition to - the policies and politics of the civilians in charge. Americans are most emphatically not proud of what their soldiers are doing in Iraq: I, for one, am disgusted.
"You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq," Bush told the troops over turkey with all the fixings, "so that we don't have to face them in our own country." Will somebody please tell me how shooting down teenaged Iraqi girls in cold blood is protecting us from a terrorist attack on American soil? If Young Qusay some day flies a jetliner into the heart of an American city, don't say you weren't warned.
I might add that the U.S. occupation authority has strongly denied that the shooting even occurred, claiming that American forces somehow chanced to come upon the bodies and that the girls were murdered by persons unknown. The story denying the incident was carried by several Western media, more than carried the original accusations. One can only note that Arab, French, and Iranian news outlets cite their sources by name, including an Iraqi policeman, while the American denial mentions no names and is therefore not checkable. How convenient.
But the perpetrators of what could be a war crime needn't worry. As the pet poodles of the War Party, the American media is all bark and no bite: they're much more interested in the pathetic details of the latest Michael Jackson scandal to be bothered with running down the truth about what happened to Fatimam and Azra.
Heck, the American media is too busy covering itself. How many times did we have to hear and read about how friggin' surprised some clueless dork of a journalist was to be specially chosen by the Powers That Be and whisked away to Iraq on Air Force One? Wowee zowee! And then we had to hear about what a political "masterstroke" it was, as the unctuous Jonah Goldberg put it, and how this warmed the cockles of American hearts as they gathered around the family hearth and sat down to a Thanksgiving feast, as Kate O'Beirne tried to spin it on "Capital Gang."
What if they had been told that, just as George Bush was popping his monkey head from behind the curtain, Fatimam and Azra were being cut down in their tracks as they foraged for firewood?
I'll bet it would have spoiled their appetite.
- Justin Raimondo
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Happy holidays from the Dept. of Homeland Security
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
12.01.03
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16069
Sec. Ridge has tons of stuff in the hopper, but how much of it will make you and your family safer?
It may seem like decades, but it was just about a year ago that President Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security and appointed Tom Ridge to be its head. To celebrate the anniversary, Secretary Ridge was scheduled to stop by and see David Letterman on CBS' "Late Show." But if you are one of those who are concerned that you haven't heard from Secretary Ridge in much too long and are yearning for the good old days when you could depend on an alert elevation every few weeks -- especially during the holiday season -- rest easy. Over at the Dept.'s Web site -- where the catchphrase is "Terrorism forces us to make a choice. Don't be afraid... Be Ready" -- there's plenty in the works.
The reason you haven't learned about many of the homeland security projects is because since the February 2003 duct tape/plastic sheeting brouhaha that emptied hardware store shelves across the country of duct tape and provided the nation's comedians and political cartoonists with a barrelful of new material, the Department has been keeping somewhat of a lower profile. (For more on duct tape, see Duct tape fantasies: Americans are ducting up and freaking out. Are you happy now, Mr. President?, and for a whole bunch of duct tape-related cartoons, see octanecreative.com.)
Cashing in on homeland security
I'm not sure how much of it is related to making you and your family safer, but homeland security is providing business opportunities galore. The "2004 Homeland & Global Security Summit," organized by Equity International, "the leader in facilitating the corporate involvement in homeland security programs," will hold a major gathering of White House, Congressional, Defense, Administration, and homeland security experts in Washington, D.C. from March 31-April 1.
The purpose of the conference is to brief companies looking to cash in on lucrative homeland security contracts on: federal homeland security spending in 2004 and 2005; state, local, and First Responder spending in 2004 and 2005; Department of Defense priorities and procurement procedures for homeland security spending; Transportation Security Administration priorities and procurement procedures for homeland security spending; Priorities and procurement procedures for health security, food security, and bio terrorism preparedness and response; IT/network security spending and procurement; Security priorities and spending of allied countries around the world; and how to win homeland and global security contracts.
In mid-December, the Minority Business Round Table (MBRT), a national organization of minority-business chief executive officers, will be hosting a conference called "Heart of America: Accessing Business Opportunities with the Department of Homeland Security," at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. This homeland security confab is aimed at getting a piece of the pie for small Hispanic-owned businesses. "Our goal is to open doors for minority-owned businesses to grow within the federal and corporate marketplaces," said Roger A. Campos, president and chief executive officer of MBRT.
The conference, the first of four to be held around the country, will include members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, White House and Congressional members, representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and officials of the DHS Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. Representatives from corporate America and key contractors also will be attending.
Wackenhut Detention Center
Speaking of business opportunities, I'm not sure if they'll be specifically discussing immigration issues at the MBRT-sponsored conferences, but did you know that several hundred asylum-seeking immigrants -- waiting for their applications to be processed at the Wackenhut Detention Center in Queens, New York -- recently ended a hunger strike called to protest the horrible conditions at the facility? The Detention Center, owned by the Florida-based Wackenhut Corrections Corp., the second largest private security company in the U.S., is under contract with the Dept. of Homeland Security.
According to the New York Press, "The detainees in Wackenhut have no windows, heat or air conditioning. They have no access to the internet, are not allowed to receive gifts (including books or writing paper) and have no privacy when they use the bathroom. When they leave the facility to be treated by a doctor, they are shackled and wear uniforms that say 'Department of Corrections.'" And these are people that have committed no crimes.
"It's basically a cargo warehouse," Archie Pyati, an attorney from the Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights (LCHR), an advocacy group for immigrants and refugees, told reporters Ana Tinsly and James Harbison.
Wackenhut knows how to turn a profit even from immigrants that have little resources and who earn about a dollar day for work performed at the facility. According to Tinsley and Harbison, "Any money given to a detainee goes into a special account that can only be used to buy items at the Wackenhut store." The Wackenhut store routinely charges $2.50 for writing paper and $1 for cans of soda. (For more on Wackenhut security empire, see Eye on Wackenhut, a Web site run by the Service Employees International Union.)
DHS resources
According to an August 2003 report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) entitled "Department of Homeland Security: The First Months," as of March 2003, "one in every twelve workers in the federal government -- a total of 160,201 -- was on the DHS payroll." TRAC, "Your Source for comprehensive, independent, and nonpartisan information about federal enforcement, staffing and spending," reports that "most DHS employees are now organized into five directorates -- (1) Border and Transportation Security (BTS), (2) Emergency Preparedness and Response, (3) Science and Technology, (4) Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection, and (5) Management." The budget for FY2004 calls for the DHS to receive some $36.2 billion.
If you are wondering about how resources are allocated to the states by the Department, the New York Daily News recently reported that New York, "the world's premier target for terror, gets less homeland security funding per person than virtually any state in the nation." In fact, writes Brian Kates, the state of Wyoming -- not necessarily known as a prime time target for terrorists -- receives $38.31 per person, compared with the $5.47 in counterterrorism funds spent on each New Yorker. California, rated the second state most at risk for attack, receives $5.21 per person in counterterrorism money.
According to Kates, "of the $900 million New York City has determined it needs to counter terrorism, it has received only $84 million from the federal government so far," and expects to receive another $75 million "in the next round of funding." Kates reports that "in fiscal 2003, the federal government provided $3.45 billion for first responders across the nation through three programs mandated by Congress: $1.9 billion in state formula grants; $800 million for high-threat urban areas; $750 million in firefighter assistance grants."
Although New York is ranked number one as a terrorist target, the grants are doled out equally to every state: "regardless of population or the actual threat of terrorism," each state receives "three-quarters of 1% of the $1.9 billion pot."
Last June, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told lawmakers the Bush administration is working on a funding formula "that better takes into account threats, population density and the presence of critical infrastructures." But next year, reports Kates, "the inequity" will get worse: "In fiscal 2004, the total amount distributed on the basis of need will decline. High-threat urban areas will receive about $725 million, a 10% cut, while the other programs will grow to $2.95 billion, a 10% increase."
Although intelligence officials warned that recent attacks abroad might indicate that something is planned for the U.S., in late-November, a Homeland Security spokesman said there was no change in the color-coded threat level, which remained at "yellow" or an elevated risk of attack. "Based on assessment of current intelligence, we have no plans to raise the threat level," department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. in Talks to Return Scores Held at Base
December 1, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/asia/01GUAN.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Senior Defense Department officials said Sunday that the military may soon release to their home countries scores of detainees, perhaps more than 100, who are being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
One senior official said negotiations were under way with the home nations of dozens of the detainees over the terms of transferring custody from the United States military to their home governments and eventual repatriation.
"We've identified a number that we think could be released to their home or host countries," one senior Pentagon official said. "We are negotiating with these countries" over the specific terms under which the prisoners might be transferred to the custody of their home countries.
The negotiations, a second senior official said, have been over issues like whether the detainees will be freed once they return home or just reimprisoned locally.
The first official declined to give the exact number being considered for release and cautioned that no final decisions had been made.
The possibility of an impending large-scale release from Guantánamo - which currently houses about 660 prisoners, most of whom were captured during and after the Afghan war - was first reported by Time Magazine. Time quoted American officials as saying that some of the detainees being considered for release had been captured by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty offered by Washington for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
The detention of people captured in Afghanistan has been a major irritant in relations between the United States and several of its allies. The captives are being held at a prison facility at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, on the southeastern tip of Cuba, and have remained in legal and political limbo for nearly two years. The issue of those captives was a major item on the agenda when President Bush conferred in London recently with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Nine Britons are detained at Guantánamo, and the British government - which has faced public pressure over the situation - has sought a series of concessions.
The United States has declined to give the detainees access to lawyers, and it has not charged any of them with crimes. Officials have said the detainees were not entitled to formal prisoner-of-war status, which would carry such rights, because they were "illegal combatants." The officials have said that when the men were captured they were not adhering to some requirements of the Geneva Conventions, like wearing clearly marked uniforms.
Those arguments by the United States have not proved persuasive with its allies.
In a speech last Tuesday, one of Britain's most senior judges, Johan Steyn, offered a scathing criticism of the United States' continued detention of prisoners at Guantánamo, the latest of several protests from top international lawyers.
"The question is whether the quality of justice envisaged for the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay complies with the minimum international standards for the conduct of fair trials," Lord Steyn said. "The answer can be given quite shortly. It is a resounding, `No.' " The speech was notable because it is extraordinary for sitting judges to comment directly on current situations.
He also said that "authoritarian regimes with dubious human rights records" have seized upon Washington's example to justify their own improper behavior.
While a large release of detainees from Guantánamo could lessen some of the international criticism, it might also provide support for those who have said the United States held the prisoners for a long time with no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that military officials have been trying to determine which prisoners should face charges before military commissions.
--------
U.S. to Release 140 From Guantanamo
No Time Frame Given for Letting Detainees Go
Reuters
Monday, December 1, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23742-2003Nov30.html
The United States plans to release 140 of the 660 prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for suspects in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, Time magazine reported yesterday.
Slated for release were "the easiest 20 percent" of detainees, a military official told the magazine. Time did not identify its source, who said the military was waiting for "a politically propitious time to release them."
A Pentagon spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
No charges have been filed against any of the 660 prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Defense officials say many are suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network or Taliban fighters from the war in Afghanistan.
Human rights groups have criticized the United States for holding the detainees without charges. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving two Britons, two Australians and 12 Kuwaitis, has agreed to decide whether foreign nationals can use U.S. courts to challenge their incarceration at the base.
According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded that some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Separately yesterday, a British human rights lobbyist said five European nations were close to a deal to repatriate citizens held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, possibly as soon as Christmas.
Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, said his group has been tracking negotiations over the prisoners between Washington and Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.
Since the prison opened in January 2002, prisoners from 42 countries have been taken to Guantanamo Bay for detention and questioning. As of Nov. 24, 84 prisoners had been transferred to their home countries for release and four had been returned to Saudi Arabia for imprisonment.
--------
Army Colonel At Prison Charged
Classified Material Allegedly Taken
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23599-2003Nov30.html
An Army colonel who directed the collection of intelligence from Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been charged with illegally removing classified material, the fourth serviceman at the base accused of security violations.
U.S. Army Col. Jackie D. Farr, a reservist heading home to the United States after a six-month tour at Guantanamo, was accused of improperly transporting classified material on Oct. 11 and with later making a false statement to investigators. The charges, violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, were announced Saturday by the U.S. Southern Command.
Farr allegedly sought to transport the materials just weeks after the military disclosed the arrests of a Muslim chaplain and two Arabic translators working at Guantanamo. His alleged actions followed statements by government officials that they were investigating possible security breaches by other service members.
A spokesman for the Southern Command, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon, said Farr remains on active duty at Guantanamo, electing to extend his tour of duty while the investigation and charges against him are pending.
While few details of the incident were available, the charging document against Farr states that he violated orders by attempting to transport unspecified classified materials "without the appropriate locking container." On Oct. 29, according to the charge sheet, he stated, " 'It was always locked up, in my presence and none of it would have left the island,' or words to that effect, which statement was totally false, and was then known by the said Colonel Jackie Duane Farr to be so false."
A lawyer from the Army's Trial Defense Service assigned to represent Farr said he could not yet comment on the facts of the case. "I have to determine what is going on right now," Capt. Paul Golden said yesterday.
Loundermon said the charges have been referred to the commander of intelligence and prison operations at Guantanamo, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who has a range of options, including dismissing the charges, referring them to a court-martial or conducting further investigation.
Farr, 58, became a military officer in 1978, according to the charging document. His service history and home base were not available yesterday.
Last month, Air Force translator Ahmad I. Halabi was charged with espionage, aiding the enemy and lying to military investigators. He is accused of trying to ferry 180 letters from the prisoners and that he intended to use them "to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of Syria." He is accused of improperly possessing classified documents including jail maps and papers describing prisoners' cell numbers. His attorneys have said he is innocent and his actions were misconstrued.
Another translator, Ahmed F. Mehalba, a civilian working at Guantanamo, was arrested on Sept. 29 at Boston's Logan International Airport allegedly carrying a computer disc containing classified materials from the base. Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain, is charged with mishandling classified information. He was released by the military last week after spending 11 weeks in a Navy brig. Attorneys for those men have also asserted their innocence.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- health
W.H.O. Aims to Treat 3 Million for AIDS
December 1, 2003
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/health/01AIDS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The World Health Organization called on developing countries yesterday to train and organize 100,000 health care and nonprofessional workers to carry out its plan to begin delivering antiretroviral drugs to three million AIDS patients by the end of 2005.
The organization, a United Nations agency, said 6 million of the 40 million people infected with the AIDS virus were in immediate need of antiretroviral treatment, but that only about 480,000 were receiving it.
The new program, which the organization said would cost at least $5.5 billion, is intended to reach half those in need by the end of 2005 - two million more than would be reached by then without such a program.
In issuing a more detailed framework for its program, to coincide with World AIDS Day today, the organization also recommended four combinations of antiretroviral drugs that countries could use to start treatment. The list was vastly simplified from the 35 possible combinations the organization had recommended previously. All four combinations have been proved effective, though none include the powerful protease inhibitor drugs that are often prescribed in the United States and other wealthy countries.
AIDS specialists whom the organization consulted recommended keeping Protease inhibitors in reserve for patients who did not respond to the first-line drugs, officials from the organization said in a telephone news conference. They said that with experience they would review treatment regimens to determine if revisions were necessary.
By involving about 100,000 workers, the organization's anti-AIDS plan is the most ambitious of the many that a number of countries have advanced in recent months and raises practical and ethical issues.
The W.H.O. made its announcement at a time when former President Bill Clinton helped broker an agreement to reduce the price of antiretroviral drugs to more affordable levels for poor countries and when countries like India and South Africa have said they will expand their programs to treat AIDS.
In issuing its plan, the W.H.O. said it hoped to provide the technical details of what was needed to treat people to extend their lives. The organization's plan calls for rapidly expanding programs to train workers and improve services, not adding new ones.
"We cannot in a two-year period build new health systems," said Dr. Charles Gilks, the leader of the organization's new AIDS treatment program.
But with insufficient supplies of drugs, even a successful W.H.O. program will create enormous ethical issues for countries in deciding which patients to treat.
"Clear decisions will have to be made where programs will be started, and that will involve winners and losers," Dr. Gilks said.
Dr. Julian Fleet, a senior policy adviser for the United Nations AIDS program, said "the question of who will receive antiretroviral drugs is really a question of who shall live."
Because making such decisions involves broad societal issues, the W.H.O. is planning a meeting at its headquarters in Geneva in a few weeks to help countries answer that and other thorny questions.
The organization's plan challenges the 34 countries with the highest infection rates to rapidly train workers to accelerate the integration of AIDS treatment in their health care programs. Many countries with the largest numbers of people living with H.I.V./AIDS have very few doctors or other trained health workers, the organization said. Many have died from untreated AIDS, while others have moved to wealthier countries.
The W.H.O. said the involvement of communities and community workers was essential to its plan. The training programs are expected to enable health workers to evaluate patients and make sure they take their medicine.
"Nothing is as rewarding" for someone who has been trained, Dr. Gilks said, than "to be able to immediately use those skills to watch somebody who is dying of something they were powerless to intervene with, and see that individual suddenly restored to life." But he said workers could become frustrated if they were trained and had no drugs to deliver or kits to test for the virus.
Many countries, medical schools, private groups and other organizations have started AIDS programs in heavily infected countries. The numbers of programs have reached the point where better coordination is needed to avoid duplication of research, training and treatment efforts, Dr. Peter Piot, the director of the United Nations AIDS program, said in a recent interview.
The W.H.O.'s recommended drug combinations for simplified AIDS treatment are: Stavudine (d4t), lamivudine (3TC) and nelfinavir; AZT, lamivudine and nelfinavir; Stavudine, lamivudine and efavirenz; and AZT, lamivudine and efavirenz.
Each country will choose based on a patient's needs and the availability and suitability of a particular regimen.
The strategy also recommends the use of quality-assured "fixed dose combinations" or blister packs of pills when available. In choosing drugs other than protease inhibitors, W.H.O. is not "pursuing second-line therapy in resource-poor countries," Dr. Gilks said. "We are enabling treatment to be widely accessible in places where it is not accessible and people are dying."
The organization's plan also simplifies monitoring by substituting easy-to-use tests like body weight and color-scale blood exams for the more complicated and expensive tests to measure the amount of CD-4 immune cells and H.I.V. in the blood used in rich countries.
In poor countries, the W.H.O. said, properly trained health workers can combine the simplified tests with clinical evaluations to effectively monitor the progress of AIDS, the effectiveness of treatment and its side effects.
The W.H.O. plan will require $5.5 billion in the next two years. But officials said they did not know exactly how much had already been committed. One reason is that some countries have made pledges but have not set aside the money.
"The lack of H.I.V. treatment is without a doubt a global emergency," Dr. Piot said. "We firmly believe that we stand no chance of halting this epidemic unless we dramatically scale up access to H.I.V. care. Treatment and prevention are the two pillars of a truly effective, comprehensive AIDS strategy."
--------
WHO Set to Announce Details of Global Effort To Fight HIV and AIDS
Plan Aims to Treat 3 Million People by 2005
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23681-2003Nov30?language=printer
The World Health Organization plans to unveil today the long-awaited details of its ambitious plan to put 3 million people on AIDS treatment by the end of 2005.
The initiative, known as "3 by 5," calls for training 100,000 workers, about half of whom have no medical skills, redirecting the focus of 10,000 clinics in poor countries, and using a few "one size fits most" antiretroviral therapies that can be managed with little direct supervision by physicians and almost no laboratory tests.
While WHO will not provide or pay for the treatment, it will give countries the advice and expertise they need to start their own programs. Specifically, it will tell them where they can buy the least expensive AIDS drugs, offer them a kit for training and certifying community health workers, publish how-to clinical guidelines for practitioners, and disseminate lessons from other programs' successes and failures as they occur.
Today's announcement, part of World AIDS Day activities, lays out a timetable and road map for a goal first floated two years ago but considered by many to be unachievable.
WHO Director General Jong Wook Lee declared placing 3 million people on AIDS treatment the main task of his five-year term, which started in July. At a U.N. General Assembly meeting on AIDS in September, WHO declared the failure to deliver lifesaving antiretroviral therapy to millions of poor AIDS patients a "global health emergency."
The logistical obstacles facing 3 by 5 are hard to overstate. The initiative aims to bring one of medicine's more complicated and expensive tasks -- optimal treatment of HIV infection -- to places where it is difficult to get a glass of clean water.
"This may be the toughest health assignment the world has ever faced, but it is also the most urgent. The lives of millions of people are at stake. Everyone involved must find new ways of working together and new ways of learning from what they do," a team of WHO experts wrote in a 55-page document outlining the plans.
In addition to saving lives, antiretroviral treatment will help prevent AIDS in the developing world by giving people a reason to be tested for the human immunodeficiency virus and educated about how to cut their risk of spreading it, many experts argue. About 40 million people are infected worldwide, although most do not know they are.
Of that total, about 850,000 are on antiretroviral treatment -- the combination of three or more drugs that often restore AIDS patients to health and suppress HIV growth indefinitely. About 500,000 are in the United States and other industrialized countries, with the remainder in low-income and developing countries.
In Africa, where at least 25 million people are infected, fewer than 100,000 receive the treatment. In all, about 6 million people in poor countries urgently need antiretroviral therapy, WHO estimates show.
While the 3 by 5 plan would tackle only half the problem, it is still unprecedented among global health initiatives.
Unlike the programs to eradicate smallpox and polio -- the only WHO efforts remotely comparable -- this goal is not one that when reached will allow public health officials to move on to other tasks. Nor is it achieved through bursts of intense effort, such as investigating disease outbreaks and mounting vaccination campaigns.
Instead, it calls for establishing thousands of programs that will treat people with HIV every day. This will require a steady supply of drugs and the money to pay for them, a system for choosing patients fairly when not everyone who qualified for treatment can get it, a workforce with the skills to monitor patients and know when someone needs to be switched to a new drug combination, and a way to look for the proliferation of drug-resistant strains of HIV.
WHO experts estimate $5.5 billion is needed to put 3 million people on treatment in the next two years. That money will come from many sources, including national health budgets of the low-income countries; money collected and disbursed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and money coming through programs run by donor nations, the biggest being the Bush administration's five-year $15 billion "emergency plan for AIDS relief" targeting 12 African and two Caribbean countries.
"A lot of money has been pledged, so in reality the funding gap is far smaller than $5.5 billion. But there is a small funding gap that will need to be closed," said Charles Gilks, the physician who heads the 3 by 5 initiative.
While WHO's role is as a consultant to countries and nongovernmental organizations (including church-based medical missions that provide up to half the health care in some African nations), 3 by 5 will have a huge effect on the organization. It will need $350 million more over the next two years, presumably to be raised from its wealthy member nations. It will send 480 additional staff members to countries with high HIV prevalence, some of them people reassigned from the Geneva headquarters and others hired locally.
In providing instructions and advisers, WHO hopes to establish the model for HIV treatment in poor settings. If adopted by many countries and programs, the 3 by 5 guidelines could have a huge effect on such issues as global pharmaceutical production and what constitutes optimal AIDS care.
For the past month, about 25 leaders of the Bush AIDS plan have been working nearly nonstop on the details of the proposal. Gilks said WHO officials met with them for two days recently. He gave no details on what was discussed but said: "We need to work in harmony. . . . It makes no sense to have duplicative or parallel programs."
The Bush plan, which will pay for AIDS prevention as well as treatment, is aiming to get 2 million people on treatment by 2008.
An expert panel assembled by WHO recommends four drug combinations, out of about 35 available. The one likely to be most popular contains stavudine (d4T), lamivudine (3TC) and nevirapine in a single pill. None of the four combinations includes a protease inhibitor. Drugs in that class are generally more expensive. In many places, including rich countries, they are often held back and used only if first-line treatment fails.
Jonathan D. Quick, head of WHO's office of essential medicines, said the drug cost for a year of treatment is now less than $300. He added that "there is reason to believe it may be below $150 per person if demand is concentrated and production goes up."
Under the treatment guidelines, a patient must have a positive HIV test before being treated, but neither a CD4-cell count nor a viral load test -- standard in the United States -- is required. If necessary, treatment can be guided by observing whether a patient improves.
Tuberculosis kills one-third to one-half of people with HIV in the developing world. Treating TB alone extends the lives of AIDS patients about three years. TB clinics and programs will be major sites for recruiting patients in urgent need of antiretrovirals.
So far, about 20 countries have asked for WHO's help in setting up treatment programs. The organization expects that number to double by next June. Consultation teams have already traveled to Kenya, Burkina Faso, Malawi and Zambia.
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Poison from Lethal Fish Could Be a Painkiller
Story by Rachelle Younglai
REUTERS CANADA:
December 1, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22969/story.htm
TORONTO - A tiny Canadian company wants to use poison from a fish - a substance more toxic than cyanide - to help cancer patients suppress pain or to wean heroin addicts off their habit.
International Wex Technologies, a Vancouver-based company listed on the small-cap Canadian Venture Exchange, says early trials show positive results from tetrodotoxin, although bigger and more extensive tests will be needed before the product reaches the marketing stage.
It says the new drug could be on the market within three years, if all the tests work out.
The new drug is derived from a blowfish poison - a substance so dangerous that a mere trace can paralyze a person within minutes.
The blowfish is known to gourmets as the source of the sometimes deadly Japanese fugu delicacy, a dish that can be prepared only by trained and licensed chefs, because the slip of a knife can poison the food, causing the diner to drop to the ground convulsing and gasping for air.
It has been described as the culinary version of Russian roulette.
But the drug derived from the poison, tetrodotoxin, has already passed two phases of clinical tests, and doctors conducting early surveys say it eased pain in terminally ill cancer patients, where no other pain medication had worked.
"It quickly became apparent that some patients were having a dramatic response. You would not have expected these results in existing treatments," said Dr Edward Sellers, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Toronto who helped Wex conduct its Phase II trials, a study of 22 patients.
Sellers said one patient in his mid-50s was in such agony that he couldn't even wear his clothes without sharp surges of pain.
But with shots of Tectin, Wex's patented name for tetrodotoxin, his pain subsided for more than week.
Researchers injected patients with several micrograms of Tectin - a quantity so small it can't be seen with the naked eye - twice a day for four days, and found that nearly 70 percent experienced a reduction in pain.
Pain relief began around the third day of treatment, and often lasted after the final injection. In some cases, the relief extended beyond 15 days, the study showed.
Tectin, a sodium channel blocker, stops nerves from sending pain signals to the brain.
The company says Tectin differs from other painkillers in that it doesn't have the same side effects as morphine and its derivatives, doesn't interact with other medicines and is not addictive. It is up to 3,200 times stronger than morphine.
The success of the early Tectin tests is a small coup for a company that has set its sights on the $38 billion North American painkiller market, some 10 percent of which comes from managing cancer pain.
Wex says that each puffer fish can provide about 600 doses of the drug from within its liver, kidneys and reproductive organs, so there is no shortage of the toxin.
POISON AS PAINKILLER
It wasn't always about pain for Wex.
Wex's founder, Hay Kong Shum, a medical technician who was educated in Russia and China, originally hoped Tectin would help ease withdrawal symptoms.
But preliminary studies found the poison had painkilling properties and the company, facing limited resources, decided to take a shortcut to profitability. It put the heroin therapy on the back burner and turned to the painkiller industry.
"It was the easiest way for us to get to market," said Donna Shum, Hay Kong's daughter and Wex's chief operating officer.
Wex's interim test results have caused some murmurings among health-care workers who wonder about the potential of this painkiller.
But researchers and analysts are not yet touting Tectin as a drug to rival morphine. Wex still has to take its drug through crucial phase III trials, where it ramps up its test numbers to at least 400 patients.
The drug also faces an image problem.
"Because it's associated with death, it got a bad rap," said Sellers.
And although the scientific community may acknowledge the properties and benefits of the compound, it is less accepting of a drug derived from nature.
"There is a resistance from the medical community to accept treatments from the natural world," said Rob Peets, an analyst with Golden Capital Securities. "If this was a chemical product it would have been snapped up a long time ago."
Wex's stock has jumped about 150 percent since August.
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China Frees 3 'Cyber Dissidents' (as a Diplomatic Visit Nears)
December 1, 2003
By JIM YARDLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/asia/01CHIN.html
BEIJING, Monday, Dec. 1 (AP) - A strong earthquake rumbled through a swath of western China's mountainous Xinjiang region on Monday, killing at least eight people and causing some homes to collapse in an area near the border with Kazakhstan, the government said.
The 6.1-magnitude quake, in the sparsely populated Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, hit at 9:38 a.m., the official New China News Agency said. It said the quake was felt for many miles around.
"Houses that were built in the 1960's and 1970's all collapsed," said an official at the Xinjiang Seismological Bureau who gave only his surname, Xie.
The National Earthquake Information Center of the U.S. Geological Service in Colorado confirmed the tremor, but said it was slightly less strong, a magnitude 5.7.
Xinjiang, a seismically active area, was the site of the most lethal quake in China this year, a magnitude-6.8 temblor on Feb. 24 that killed 268 people.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing some 240,000 people. Its magnitude was measured at 7.8 to 8.2.
Though China's western regions are known for their earthquakes, the number of fatal quakes in recent months - at least a half-dozen - has been noteworthy.
Last week, a magnitude-5 quake struck a remote area of the southwestern province of Yunnan, injuring 20 people. A tremor of magnitude-6.2 on July 21 killed 16 people.
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Sylvia Bernstein, 88, Civil Rights Activist, Dies
December 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/national/01BERN.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - Sylvia Bernstein, a native Washingtonian who championed civil rights and fought to desegregate the city in the 1950's, died on Nov. 23. She was 88.
A daughter of Russian immigrants, Mrs. Bernstein worked to desegregate area restaurants, an amusement park and pools and playgrounds. She advocated home rule for the District of Columbia and protested the Vietnam War and the development of nuclear weapons.
Over the years, she and her husband, Albert, a union activist, made their home in Silver Spring, Md., into a salon of sorts, where thinkers and activists met to debate. Mr. Bernstein died in February.
Members of the Communist Party in the 1940's, the Bernsteins were targets of government scrutiny.
Mrs. Bernstein also worked briefly for the federal government. She was a secretary for the War Department in the 1930's and, decades later, volunteered in the White House, answering letters to the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mrs. Bernstein's lifelong commitment to social causes is chronicled in a 1989 memoir by her son Carl, "Loyalties."
Carl Bernstein is the former Washington Post investigative reporter who along with Bob Woodward broke a series of Watergate break-in stories that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation.
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Victims To Protest New Exhibit Of Enola Gay
Nuclear Bomb Survivors Want Their Stories Included
December 1, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.nbc4.com/news/2673375/detail.html
TOKYO -- Some Japanese survivors of the world's only nuclear bomb attacks are upset with plans to display the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian's new annex to the Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport.
The survivors are demanding that the Smithsonian include figures and photographs of Japanese casualties in the museum's exhibit of the B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
The Japan Confederation of A-Bomb and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization is planning to send a team to Washington later this month to deliver a petition of their demands. Protests also are planned.
A museum spokesman referred all questions about the exhibit to a statement released last month. It says the Enola Gay display will tell visitors basic facts about the airplane's history.
The Enola Gay will to be part of a 200-aircraft exhibit at the Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport. The annex is expected to open Dec. 15.
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Miami Protesters See Rich Heritage in Dissent
Story by Michael Christie
REUTERS USA:
December 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22985/story.htm
MIAMI - For veteran rights campaigner Richard Spisak, the tens of thousands of marchers expected to hit Miami's streets next week won't just be protesting at a meeting about an Americas-wide free-trade zone.
He believes the protesters will be carrying on a long struggle that began in the days of the divine right of kings and led to the civil rights Americans now take for granted, like racial desegregation, women's suffrage and labor unions.
"What we see in the streets, and I'm not talking about those few that are out there for destruction, but the reason the thoughtful people, the reason the concerned people go the street, is that there's no real voice," said Spisak.
"These decisions, they don't just have an impact on the elect that go to Davos," he added, referring to the Swiss mountain resort where the world's movers and shakers meet annually for a summit.
"They have an impact on the poorest campesino (farmer) in the highlands of Mexico, the family in a trailer park in Arkansas and the poor factory worker who, whether he be in England or Germany or America, that job is gone."
Launched in Miami in 1994, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas is intended to bring down trade barriers in every country in the region except communist Cuba by 2005.
Opponents, who range from unionists to environmentalists, human rights activists to anarchists, say it does much more.
They say that like other trade deals, it could accelerate deforestation, lead to the privatization of public services like water and prompt factories to move where wages are lower.
Putting profits before life, and the wants of a few over the needs of the many, it may give corporations more clout than elected governments, they add.
"It's not just Chicken Little, the sky is falling, we don't like it because we've nothing better to do," said Eric Rubin of the Florida Fair Trade Coalition. "It's against the people, the environment and democracy."
FROM PUPPET SHOWS TO A NUDE RALLY
Among the 35,000 protesters Miami police expect for the Nov. 17-21 FTAA ministerial meeting will be pensioners, students, union members and veterans like Spisak, 51, of the fight for desegregation and rallies against the Vietnam War. Most plan nothing more unlawful than sit-ins to block streets, puppet shows and a nude rally at a Miami Beach Gap store to protest sweatshop labor.
As at previous trade meetings - most notably in Seattle in 1999 - police expect up to 500 radicals, or "black bloc" storm troopers, to come to Miami looking for a violent confrontation.
The much-feared anarchists point out that like civil disobedience in general, violence itself has a lauded past.
"The Boston Tea Party was property damage," said Sarah Jonesy of the former Anti-Capitalist Convergence, speaking at a rare anarchists' news conference on Tuesday night.
Bombarded almost nightly by television footage of hooded rioters trashing cars and storefronts in Seattle or elsewhere, Miami feels like it is bracing for war.
Activists say city authorities are overreacting.
"If they think that dissent is somehow parallel to invading Mongol hordes, they have lost their minds and they have lost what this country is all about, and that is freedom," said Adam Eidinger of the DC Statehood Green Party.
"The people who are coming are fighting for global justice, they're fighting for human rights. We're fighting for anything but the destruction of the city."
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